Community Hub – A collaboration channel

Cognizant Resilience & Reliability (R2) Engineering ™ team's submission for IBM Call for Code (CFC 2020) Hackathon.

Contents

• Overview
• Technology Stack
• Logical Flow
• IBM Cloud Services
• Virtual Assistant
• Demo
• Solution Roadmap
• Authors
• References
• License

Overview

Communities need to cooperate among themselves to solve their needs in times of crisis, whether it be to advertise where supplies are held, offer assistance for collections, or other local services like volunteer deliveries. Many of the nations in the world need to lockdown their cities for prolonged duration to control the COVID-19 spread. People in the respective cities and communities run out of essential food, household and other supplies very quick. Their essential needs has to be full filled in secured manner with social distancing.

This mobile application is for the people in need to find nearby supplies for their essential demands during crisis situations. It also provide a channel to offer voluntary services, donations to the needed communities. By using this application, communities will be able to view,

1. Top demand and supplies in their localities
2. Lookup the supplies for their demands using chatbot
3. Facility to post the vegetable stock by farmers/producers, voluntary service providers, locality needs of community people to see and respond

Technology Stack

1. Reactive Native - UI
2. Node.js - API
3. IBM Cloudant - Database (No-SQL)
4. IBM Watson Assistant - Chat-bot
5. IBM Cloud - Cloud Foundary Services

Logical flow

This solution has a chat interface built using IBM Watson Assistant, data storage to hold the status of demands and supplies available, and location services with real-time information to get users the information they need.

1. The user in need/demand launches the mobile app and can access information across multiple services.
2. The user in need/demand can ask questions to virtual Assistant and get answers on food/service availability questions, top demands/supply, create a new demand/donation/supply.
3. The Supplier user can post the availability of resources they can provide, as well as locate the items they need.
4. The user in need/demand can obtain geolocation data to plot routes to collect (or drop off) supplies using HERE Location Services.

IBM Cloud Services

IBM Cloud services provide an easy way of implementing the solution in short span of time using,

1. Application is developed using React Native for UI, Node.js for API layer with IBM Cloudant No-SQL database at the backend levaraging IBM's statrtup kit for the hackathon
2. Application is hosted as Cloud Foundary Services on IBM cloud
3. IBM Watson Assistant for Chatbot integration to post the demand and get nearby supplies with contact details as response. Chatbot also helps to add supplies and dontations by invoking backend Node.js API hosted

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistant developed using IBM Watson Assistant integrates with APIs to provide below support by using simple chat,

1. Lookup for top demand/supplies
2. Search for supplies available for specific product in need in sepecific locality
3. Create a new demand/supply/donation

Virtual assistant (standalone) for this application can be accessed here.

Demo

Solution Roadmap

The basic features and functionalties of the application is extended from IBM's CFC 2020 hackathon statrup kit. The chat-bot has been trained to respond dynamically based on user need and provide real-time accuracy in the response. It also helps to create demands or supplies for a brand new user by asking relevant questions. The below are some of the additional features that can be added to make this more relevant and better as a platform.

1. Search result based on distance using map APIs
2. Retail implementation to connect demand vs supplier
3. 3rd party login integration
4. Alerts via push notification or preferred communication channel
5. Chat with supplier or requester (one-to-one)
6. Voice enabled search

Authors

1. M. Chandrasekar
2. Srinath Boorla
3. Umamaheshwar Yallapanthul
4. Saradhi Nallani Chakravarthy
5. Sivasubramanian Bagavthiappan

References

1. Code setup and deployment guide
2. IBM Starter kit repository

License

This solution is made available under the Apache 2 License.