The Problem: When Maps Become Traps
When a disaster hits—like the sudden, severe floods common during India's monsoon season —the fastest route is often the most dangerous. Traditional map applications prioritize speed; in an emergency, the priority shifts entirely to safety. People need more than just directions; they need route guidance that accounts for real-time, hyperlocal environmental conditions.

The challenge is integrating vast, volatile data streams (weather) with static maps (roads) to provide an actionable, safe path.

Introducing SafeSteps: Disaster Route Finder

SafeSteps is a web-based Disaster Route Finder that layers real-time weather alerts onto a map, helping users find safe routes during storms and floods. It is a pure Civic Tech solution built to enhance safety when it matters most.

The core idea: Turn raw weather data into a life-saving overlay.

The Engineering Deep Dive: The Geospatial Data Pipeline
SafeSteps is built on a two-layer API architecture that allows for fast, client-side rendering of complex environmental data:

1. The Live Weather Layer: OpenWeatherMap API The first crucial component is fetching accurate, up-to-the-minute weather data:

Data Fetching: We use the OpenWeatherMap API to query conditions (rain, storms, etc.) for a user-specified or automatically detected location.

The Geo-Fencing Challenge: The key technical challenge is translating the API's atmospheric data (e.g., severe rainfall alerts) into geographic zones that represent a flood or storm risk. This requires parsing the JSON response and creating an invisible geofence around the affected areas.

1. The Mapping Layer: Leaflet.js Instead of a heavy, complex mapping framework, SafeSteps uses Leaflet.js.

Lightweight Rendering: Leaflet is a small, open-source JavaScript library built for mobile-friendly interactive maps. This was a deliberate choice for accessibility, ensuring the app loads quickly even in remote or low-bandwidth areas (like a BSF Campus in Tripura).

Dynamic Overlays: Leaflet makes it straightforward to plot markers and, crucially, to draw the polygons and colored zones that represent the "unsafe" areas identified by the weather API.

1. Route Calculation Heuristics (The Magic) The "Safe Route Guidance" is where the magic happens. While a full shortest-path algorithm (like Dijkstra's) is complex to run client-side for dynamic safety data, SafeSteps uses a powerful heuristic:

Safety Scoring: Every potential road segment is given a safety score.

Alert Proximity: If a segment falls within a predefined radius of the dynamically drawn weather alert zone, its safety score drops to zero, effectively making it impassable on the suggested route.

Visualization: The user's requested route is then calculated, visually avoiding the hazardous areas, providing a clear safe path based on the combined weather and road data.

Building for Impact
The real-world value of integrating these two systems is enormous: it empowers users to make data-driven decisions that protect their safety, using code built entirely on open-source, accessible technology. SafeSteps is a testament to the power of using simple APIs to solve profound social challenges.

Try SafeSteps & Contribute!
I’m currently focused on expanding the geofencing logic to better handle different types of natural disasters (like wildfires or tsunamis). I’d love to hear your thoughts on integrating other open-source routing algorithms!

Live Demo (SafeSteps): https://shalinibhavi525-sudo.github.io/Safe_steps/

GitHub Repo: github.com/shalinibhavi525-sudo

Shambhavi Singh Self-Taught Dev, Gap Year Student, Builder