A pair of 14 year old girls in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, have created an app that could potentially be of interest for future disaster response, as the next generation of developers try to put their stamp on disaster response.
Leya Oommen, inspired by a visit to Kerala, India in 2018 and the flooding she witnessed there, developed the Aid In Disaster app with fellow student Ellen Brisley, according to The Waterloo Chronicle. The app, which won an $1,000 award in the North American Technovation competition, targets the aftermath of disaster response and the communication between donors, governmental organizations and emergency response to provide specific aid to survivors in affected regions. “The biggest thing is after a disaster, people need information so that they don’t need to freak out, and they can be calm after the chaos,” Brisley told The Waterloo Chronicle. “You don’t have to worry about resources coming in, you don’t have to worry about what to access. So pretty much, our app just helps organize all the information, so that’s not a priority, and saving people’s lives really is.”
Although the competition is currently still in its semifinals, Oommen and Brisley plan to develop the app prototype further in discussion with the Red Cross, adding more categorizations and languages for global applications.
