Drop, cover, hold -> reunite
Get down, get low, get out -> reunite
Get ready, get thru -> reunite
reUnite is a personalised, engaging, socially focused emergency preparation and reuniting tool.
It allows Wellingtonians to make meet-up plans for their family, friends and colleagues when disaster strikes. They can practice their meet-up plans and add pretend hazards for everyone to avoid. In the event of an emergency, reUnite can be used to route to a meet-up spot while avoiding crowd-sourced information about hazards.
Why is our app different from others?
Engagement.
reUnite provides a fun way for people to practice and remember their emergency plans. Wellingtonians can earn badges by regularly engaging with the app, successfully and quickly completing drills and by getting their friends to join. reUnite will be connected to social networks so they can share their achievements and show that they care about their friend's safety.
Crowd-sourcing.
reUnite allows users to identify hazards during a disaster and indicate their severity. By a voting system, reUnite can verify the accuracy of the information. This is then used to re-reroute people during a disaster and can be used by civil defence services to identify at-risk areas.
Health and safety compliance.
Running and measuring staff performance in legally required safety drills is a modern challenges. reUnite allows companies to run simultaneous drills at multiple different locations and monitor their employees arriving at designated safe zones in real-time. These can be scheduled regularly in advance for ease of use.
Safe zone selection.
reUnite evaluates the safety of a meet-up point for different disasters. It uses open data about landslides, flood zones, earthquake prone zones, power line zones, school and parks.
Offline access.
With the Android and iOS SDK's provided by HERE, routing could be provided by downloading a map of Wellington, which would be approximately 40MB.
Channels and marketing
reUnite is primarily focused on spreading through social networks and being supported by government agencies. The costs associated with the creation and maintenance of the app will be offset by a business continuity plan.
Potential feature extensions
- Running area based challenges/competitions
- Preparation checklist for emergency kits with time-based notifications to replace expired items
- Expanding to include more datasets for other disasters (e.g. volcanic eruptions)
- Expanding to include New Zealand and other countries
- Including twitter feed of important emergency information sources
