Allergeez: Houston Pollen and Mold Alert App

Cameron Alexander (@emptyflash)

The Idea and Use Cases

• Give notifications for specific allergies
• i.e. "I'm allergic to oak pollen, so I want to know when I should take medication in the morning"
• i.e. "I want to know when I should move my car so it doesn't get coated"

Scope

• Bare minimum:
  • Send alerts when the HHD pollen and mold page is updated
• Stretch goals:
  • Allow users to give feedback on when they feel their allergies and guess what they're allergic to
  • Build predictive model to give updates on weekends and holidays
  • Dashboard to show Houston pollen data and trends

Current Stage

• In contact with HHD and researchers from UH
• Some data preprocessing/normalization has already been done: github.com/emptyflash/houston-pollen-data
• First attempts at a predictive model (not very good)

Next Steps

• Talk to experts to get a better idea of what might be feasible
• More data collection and cleaning before the hackathon
• Implement features at the hackathon

Roles

• Backend Devs
  • Responsible for scraping, sending push notification, etc. Probably Python.
• Frontend Devs
  • Responsible for displaying notifications, graphs, etc. Needs JS and web tech (service workers for notifications) knowledge.
• Stats and ML Devs
  • Responsible for the two predictive models and integrating with backend devs for alerts.
• Public Speakers
  • Responsible for slide deck and presentation.