Why SafeSpot?
Many victims lived near cooling centres — but had no way of knowing. If they had received a real-time alert and been guided to the nearest safe space, more lives could have been saved.
SafeSpot detects extreme heat in real time and routes you to the nearest cooling centre via GPS.
How It Works
Unlike weather apps that report a city-wide average, SafeSpot measures the actual temperature where you are.
A Raspberry Pi sensor captures actual ground-level temperature.
ArcGIS data overlays heat island zones on an interactive map.
Alert trigger when heat and location reach extreme risk.
Instantly calculates your nearest cooling centre via Maps.
How It Works
Unlike weather apps that report a city-wide average, SafeSpot measures the actual temperature where you are.
A custom hardware Raspberry Pi temperature sensor is deployed directly in high-risk heat zones. Instead of relying on generalized city-wide weather reports, our sensor sends hyper-local, real-time data to a FastAPI backend at regular intervals. This live reading is instantly rendered on the map, capturing the true ground-level climate reality.
We integrate live ArcGIS REST API data to display Toronto's 'Impervious Surface and Urban Heat Island Effect' layer directly on an interactive Leaflet map. This creates colour-coded zones—from yellow to deep red—clearly distinguishing high, medium, and low heat risk areas so you can instantly see which neighbourhoods are most vulnerable.
Using secure browser APIs, SafeSpot pinpoints your exact geographic coordinates in real time. By quickly detecting your position, the application establishes your precise location as the critical starting point for all subsequent safety and routing calculations.
Your live GPS coordinates are dynamically cross-referenced against the ArcGIS urban heat island layers. Because experiencing extreme temperatures inside a known heat island is exponentially more dangerous, SafeSpot combines these two data points—hardware sensor readings and geospatial risk zoning—to accurately calculate your individualized risk level.
When our Raspberry Pi sensor detects that the local temperature has exceeded the critical 35°C threshold, the app automatically triggers an 'Extreme Heat Warning'. A prominent alert banner fires, displaying your current temperature and risk level, immediately prompting you to find a cool space.
Once a danger alert is triggered, the system automatically calculates the distance to the closest City of Toronto cooling centre or library branch. It highlights these safe spaces on your map and displays actionable information, such as "Nearest Cooling Centre: [Name], 0.3 km away", providing you with an immediate, life-saving route to safety.
Live Map
Experience our live integration. We combine real-time hardware sensor readings with ArcGIS mapping to highlight extreme urban heat zones and safely route users to cooling centres.
Explore the complete SafeSpot architecture. From Raspberry Pi sensor scripts to the FastAPI backend and Next.js frontend—everything is available for review and contribution.
View on GitHub→Behind SafeSpot
The engineers and designers behind the project.
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