NATURAL DISASTER ALERT APP FOR iOS

Capstone Proposal

Presented to

CST 499 Faculty at

California State University, Monterey Bay

by

E.J. Rollo, Sean DeLacerda, Annie Center, Sean Wilson

October 2021
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
NATURAL DISASTER ALERT APP FOR iOS

by

E.J. Rollo, Sean DeLacerda, Annie Center, Sean Wilson

California State University Monterey Bay, 2021

The purpose of our iOS application is to provide a natural disaster alert solution to

California residents tailored to the types of disasters encountered in the state. The app will

connect with real-time earthquake and wildfire data feeds and alert the user to a nearby disaster

based on their location. The app’s main feature is its simplicity and easy to use map interface

which will display the primary details of the nearby disaster on the map. This app’s customer

base is from young adults all the way up to seniors and is intended to display only the most

necessary data.

California is a state that has been ravaged by wildfires over the past decade with the

fires intensifying each year due to the escalation of circumstances related to climate change.

Californians have adapted and learned to live with the fires and earthquakes. Our app will help

facilitate this adaption further by providing real time alert notifications, helping Californians stay

informed so that they can keep their families and loved ones safe and clear of danger.
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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2
PART I 4
BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION 4
PROJECT NAME AND DESCRIPTION 4
PROBLEM: KNOWING WHERE THE THREAT IS 4
SOLUTION: ACCESS TO REAL-TIME ALERTS 4
EVIDENCE 5
PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES 5
ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN 6
STAKEHOLDERS AND COMMUNITY 6
APPROACH/METHODOLOGY 6

PART II 8
ETHICAL AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS 8
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 8
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS 8

PART III 10
PROJECT SCOPE 10
TIMELINE AND BUDGET 10
MILESTONES AND TIMELINE 10
RESOURCES 10
RISKS AND DEPENDENCIES 11
FINAL DELIVERABLES 11
USABILITY TESTING AND EVALUATION 11

REFERENCES 13
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PART I

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION

PROJECT NAME AND DESCRIPTION

Our proposed project is a natural disaster alert application for iOS platform that provides

real-time earthquake and wildfire alerts to the user. The app will also provide local weather

based on the user's GPS location. The app will be map based displaying earthquake and

wildfire icons in the vicinity of the user’s location.

The app is targeted to California residents since there are many earthquakes and

wildfires registered throughout the year. In a state with 40 million residents, providing real-time

disaster alerts is crucial to keeping residents informed and safe.

PROBLEM: KNOWING WHERE THE THREAT IS

Earthquakes and fires are natural disasters that have nearly no warning system to

predict their occurrences. Even though fires that have already occurred and spread do provide

some indication for the direction they will spread, no one knows when one will start. You can be

enjoying a beautiful day outdoors or travelling to one of California’s great destinations without

any knowledge that a fire may have just broken out near your location or intended destination.

Earthquakes are not always large in scale initially, but some relatively small earthquakes

on a fault line can lead to a much larger magnitude earthquake. When someone experiences an

earthquake the first thing they want to know is how close they are to its epicenter. Determining

the location of the epicenter is crucial to know if they experienced the outer waves of a huge

earthquake 300 miles away or if it was centered within 20 miles.

SOLUTION: ACCESS TO REAL-TIME ALERTS

The solution is to provide residents with a real-time alert system on their phone that

knows their location and relies on the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) accurate
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scientific data feed to alert them to a nearby disaster event. Knowledge is power and with this

power users can be confident that they have all the information to make a safe decision for

them, their friends, and their loved ones. When you’re on a long hike and are instantly alerted

that a wildfire has started up somewhere down your path, you can make a quick informed

decision to turn back and head for safety.

EVIDENCE
Due to the acceleration of climate change leading to more wildfires and due to the long

standing threats of earthquakes in California, the need for an app that provides real time alerts

is a necessity to help people adapt to our ever changing environment. The addition of a local

weather feed will draw users into the app on a more regular basis and not just when the disaster

alerts are triggered. By making it an everyday app it will keep users engaged and more aware of

their surroundings even when alerts are not triggered. Information is power.

PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Goals and Objectives

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

Our natural disaster alert application helps California residents stay informed with up to date
information on earthquake and wildfire threats in their vicinity. Our mission is to build an
application that benefits residents by keeping them engaged with daily weather information
and alerted as soon as a disaster breaks out.

GOAL Goal Goal

Real-time disaster alerts Provide simple local weather Keep the design simple yet
informative

OBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE

1) Use the most 1) Use a feed that 1) The homepage will be

accurate data feeds
from the USGS
2) Create simple to read
icons on a map
provides basic map based
weather data
2) Unique icons will be
2) Create a homepage designed in Illustrator
where the local and serve as our
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display weather is shown to branding

keep the user
engaged daily

ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN
There are disaster apps available on the iOS App Store, but what will differentiate ours is

its simplicity and ease of use. The additional weather feed will be another component that will

make it stand out from the rest. Disaster Alert is an app that provides numerous natural disaster

alerts including floods, wildfires, and hurricanes (Rotter, Price, 2021). Though these apps offer

complete solutions, we want to tailor our app more specifically to California residents. Providing

them with a simple interface to use during disasters will be an improvement over apps that offer

everything under the sun, including confusion during a disaster.

STAKEHOLDERS AND COMMUNITY

The stakeholders and community are the residents of California who need to adapt to

climate change by using smarter technology to keep them in the know about disasters

developing around them. Californians are proud of their state and want to find ways to use

technology in non-invasive ways to work with nature, not against it.

The ideas we have presented so far are a framework from which to build on with future

updates. The disaster app can have community features added to allow users to communicate

with each other when navigating disasters. If there phones have low earth orbit satellite service

they would be able to maintain contact during a disaster.

APPROACH/METHODOLOGY
For this project, we plan on using the Agile development methodology. We decided that

one-week sprints would be perfect for this project because that way our sprints will line up with
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the modules for the course. One-week sprints are also ideal because they will allow the team to

stay more focused by setting smaller goals and regrouping more often, which is very beneficial

since we will only have a few weeks to complete this project.

We also plan on using Jira to help us track our progress. Jira will be a powerful tool for

this project because it will allow us to create stories, bugs, and tasks and assign them evenly

between each team member. We can also assign a point estimate to each card so that we can

better discern how tasks should be distributed. We will assign points based on the estimated

amount of hours it will take to complete a card. Each card we create should also have a

description. For bugs, the description should detail the nature of the bug and also include steps

to reproduce the bug.

Since we are planning on displaying information about a number of different types of

natural disasters on this app, we will need to research what types of metrics and alerts will be

helpful for each type of disaster. We will also need to research other natural disaster apps on

the market in order to get a better feel for what our app needs to succeed and what our app can

do differently or better than other apps. We can include research in our Jira board as well and

even include links to sources in the Jira tickets.

We will be building this application in React Native so that we can deploy to both iOS

and Android without having to basically write the same code twice. React Native is also very

easy to learn and work with. In addition, it has a very active community and lots of amazing add-

ons that will help us to develop this app quickly. It is also built off of React, which we are all

familiar with after taking CST 438. We will also be relying pretty heavily upon APIs for real-time

data, so we will have to do research and find the best APIs we can for this project.
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PART II

ETHICAL AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The primary ethical consideration in creating an app that broadcasts disaster alerts is in

how providing such important information impacts lesser served communities. Lesser served

communities often do not have easy access to mobile devices, or the Internet, and struggle to

keep up in the information age.

We imagine a scenario where a wildfire has broken out in a more rural community, which

tend not to have reliable access to Internet and mobile devices, with half of the population

lacking access to the disaster alerts and relying on the other half of the residents who are able

to get early warnings on their smartphones to relay the information to the rest of the community.

In a situation like this the person getting the early alerts is likely preoccupied with protecting

their family and property and may not have time to pass the early warning alerts to the lesser

served members of the community.

The scenario described above is an example where getting early alerts can save lives

and property, while not having access to this early information can eventually lead to

unnecessary deaths and financial ruin through uninsured property losses. This is a struggle that

underserved communities are, unfortunately, all too familiar with.

LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
One of the primary legal considerations we must consider is the potential liability of

unsuspectingly relaying a false positive alert. This is unlikely to be the case with earthquake

alerts which are broadcast after the event, since we don’t have predictive tools yet. However, if

a false wildfire alert were broadcast to a community which sets off a panic leading to people

shutting down businesses, and taking precautionary measures because they think a raging fire
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is headed straight towards them, this could lead to a backlash on the developers. Not to

mention that potential damage to our reputation since we could lose our credibility as a reliable

source for this type of information.

We do believe that because we are rebroadcasting an alert feed from a reliable agency

that this type of scenario would be rare. Whenever a group is delivering disaster related

information to a community, there must be a sense of responsibility for the accuracy of the

information. In considering this, we may have to implement some type of filters to potentially

detect false flag alerts.

Another legal concern is with data privacy since we are able to detect the users GPS

location. The selling of location data from smartphones is very rampant now and though we may

not be embarking down that path, we still have to consider the ramifications of having access to

our users location data.

Lastly, it is important to convey that our application is not the only resource one should

use to obtain disaster-related information. For example, an event may not be captured by our

application, and a user could assume an area is safe and take action based on that assumption.

Therefore, it is critical that we inform users of the need to verify any information obtained

through our app.

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PART III

PROJECT SCOPE

TIMELINE AND BUDGET

The timeline for this project, as outlined in the following table, is based on the Agile

development cycle and is ideal for a project of this scope and timeline. Agile is structured by

sprints, which allows us to map out 1-week sprints for each of the key milestones set forth in the

table. We do not need to use any funds for this project and therefor do not have an associated

budget. Our time is our resource, and we will maximize our efficiency through this timeline.

MILESTONES AND TIMELINE

COMPLETION
MILESTONE TASKS
DATE

UI design Design and source artwork such as icons, app layout 11/2/2021
theme, and placement of functionality.

Data Feeds Source earthquake and wildfire JSON data feeds. If time 11/9/2021
permits we will also include weather data. Begin
implementation by connecting and displaying raw data
from feeds, creating hooks for integration.

Integrate Map Integrate the map into the app and test out API calls to 11/16/2021
prepare for integration with data feeds

Full Integrate data feeds into map and display real time alerts, 11/23/2021
Integration completing the main app design.

Testing/ Full testing of all features and deployment to testing 11/30/2021

Debugging group

Launch Launch the app to Apple’s app store 12/7/2021

Our team of 4 will divide up into teams of 2 to work together on the following tasks.

TEAM TASK

E.J. / Sean W. Data feeds, app framework, testing/debugging, and working with test
cases.
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Sean D. / Annie UI design, map design and integration.

RESOURCES
Our resources for this project include the following:

1. Utilization of open source earthquake and wildfire data feeds from USGS and Cal Fire.

2. Making use of our student license for Adobe Creative Cloud for artwork and

JetBrains/XCode for development.

3. Google forms for collecting feedback from testing group

RISKS AND DEPENDENCIES

The main risk is in integrating the map with the data feeds and triggering the alerts. We

have limited experience with map API’s, but from initial research we conducted, the ability to

read longitude/latitude from the host device and extracting the location data from the data feeds

to trigger alerts can be done through common API calls.

Another major risk is getting the app approved by Apple and deployed to the App store.

Some of our team members have experience deploying apps to the App store which should

mitigate any unfamiliarity with the process. Launching the app is our last step so the

dependency risk has been eliminated.

FINAL DELIVERABLES
The final deliverable for this project will be a self-contained iOS application which can be

downloaded and operated on a recent generation iPhone. The feedback from our test cases will

also be presented with the final app.

USABILITY TESTING AND EVALUATION

We will conduct the usability testing with 6-8 participants from the 24 – 68 age group to

gain a full understanding of the app’s usability over a broad skill level. The app will be installed
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on the test subjects iPhone to allow them to interact with it over the course of a few days,

logging their feedback in a Google form.

The forms will be comprised of a mix of questions and user experience feedback. The

questions will address very specific features, while the test users will also be asked to share

their overall experience with the app in a paragraph format.

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REFERENCES
Rotter, J, Price, M (2021, May 29) 16 emergency apps for wildfires, earthquakes and

other disasters.

Retrieved September 26, 2021, from:

https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/16-emergency-apps-for-wildfires-

earthquakes-and-other-disasters/