RELIEF LINK

Devlog-3 ReliefLink Official Portal DashboardI’ve been working on the dashboard for the official ReliefLink portal.The idea is to make it a central place where officials can quickly see what’s happening during a disaster — active requests, relief camps, volunteers, resources, and areas that need attention.During a disaster, information can become overwhelming very quickly. So instead of having everything scattered around, I want the dashboard to turn that information into something simple, organized, and actionable.I’m also designing it so that a new disaster can have its own camps, requests, volunteers, and resources.It’s still a work in progress, but the goal is simple:Take the chaos of a disaster and turn it into a structured response.

Devlog-2 Why I Want to Create ReliefLink. I live in Kerala.For us, floods and landslides aren’t just things we hear about in the news. They are situations we have seen happen around us. Living in a place that has faced these disasters gave me a reason to think about what technology could do when every second matters.When a disaster happens, everything can become chaotic very quickly.People need information. Families need help. Volunteers want to help but may not know where they are needed. Relief camps need resources. Emergency teams need to coordinate. And all of this is happening at the same time.In that kind of situation, getting the maximum amount of accurate information to the largest number of people as quickly as possible is not easy.Trying to create a structure in the middle of absolute chaos is even harder.But I think it’s worth trying.That is the idea behind ReliefLink.I want to build a system that can bring together emergency requests, volunteers, relief camps, resources, and important information in one place. The goal isn’t to eliminate the chaos of a disaster — because that isn’t realistic.The goal is to make the response to that chaos more organized.A disaster can change from one situation to another. A flood may require completely different resources from a landslide. A relief camp that exists today may not be the right one tomorrow. New requests will appear, priorities will change, and information will constantly need to be updated.That’s why I don’t want ReliefLink to be a static application.I want it to be something that can adapt to each disaster as it happens.I’m building ReliefLink not just to learn how to make an app, but to explore how software can be used to solve a real problem that is close to home.There is still a long way to go.

Day 1: Starting ReliefLink
Today I finally started turning my idea for ReliefLink into an actual app.
I decided to build it using Flutter. I honestly spent a good amount of time just getting the development setup working, especially the Android emulator and SDK. At one point I kept getting errors because I was running Flutter commands from the wrong folder. 😭
Once I got past that, I started working on the actual app.
I built the main ReliefLink screen with three sections: Request Help, Relief Camps, and Official Portal.
The part I’m happiest about today is the Relief Camp system.
I wanted the Official Portal to be able to create a relief camp and have that camp actually show up for users, instead of just displaying a “camp created” message.
So I created a camp data model and connected it to the Relief Camps screen. Now an official can enter the camp name, location, capacity, and available services like food, water and medical support. After creating it, the camp appears in the Relief Camps section.
I tested it by creating a Wayanad Emergency Relief Camp in Kalpetta, and seeing it actually appear in the camp list was probably my favourite part of today’s progress.
There were definitely some small problems along the way like missing imports, files in the wrong folders, and figuring out why my newly created camp wasn’t appearing. But fixing those problems also helped me understand how the different parts of a Flutter app connect.
The app is still very much a prototype, but it finally feels like I’m building something real rather than just designing screens.
Next, I want to work on the Request Help system so that people can actually submit emergencies and officials can see those requests.