🛡️ Neighbourhood Watch Assistance System

A Flask-based web application that empowers communities to report, monitor, and respond to safety incidents within their neighborhood.
This system integrates Google Maps for real-time location tracking and employs the Vincenty inverse formula for accurate geodesic distance calculations between coordinates.

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🚀 Features

• 📍 Accurate Location Tracking: Uses Vincenty formula (inverse method) to compute precise distances between two GPS coordinates.
• 🗺️ Google Maps Integration: Visual representation of incident reports and responder locations.
• 🔔 Real-time Alerts: Built with Flask-SocketIO for instant communication and event updates.
• 👥 Community Reporting: Users can report suspicious activity or emergencies in their area.
• 🧭 Proximity-Based Response: Identifies nearby watch members or authorities based on computed distances.
• 💾 Database-Driven: Persistent storage powered by SQLAlchemy with MySQL connector.
• 🔒 Secure Forms & API: Utilizes Flask-WTF for validation and Flask-RESTful for modular API design.

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🧩 Tech Stack

• Backend: Flask, Flask-RESTful, Flask-SocketIO
• Frontend: Google Maps JavaScript API, HTML/CSS/JS
• Database: MySQL (via Flask-SQLAlchemy)
• Distance Calculation: Vincenty Formula (Inverse Method)
• Real-time Communication: WebSocket (Flask-SocketIO)

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⚙️ Installation & Setup

1️⃣ Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/nwas.git
cd nwas

2. Create and activate a virtual environment (recommended)

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate   # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure Environment Variables Create a .env file in the root directory and add your configuration:

   SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key
   SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI=mysql+mysqlconnector://user:password@localhost/db_name
   GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=your_google_maps_api_key

5. Run the application

   flask run

   The app will be available at: http://127.0.0.1:5000

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📦 Dependencies

aniso8601==9.0.1
blinker==1.7.0
certifi==2024.6.2
charset-normalizer==3.3.2
click==8.1.7
colorama==0.4.6
Flask==3.0.0
Flask-Cors==4.0.1
Flask-RESTful==0.3.10
Flask-SQLAlchemy==3.1.1
Flask-WTF==1.2.1
Flask-SocketIO==5.3.6
greenlet==3.0.1
idna==3.7
importlib-metadata==6.8.0
itsdangerous==2.1.2
Jinja2==3.1.2
MarkupSafe==2.1.3
mysql-connector==2.2.9
Pillow==9.2.0
pytz==2023.3.post1
requests==2.32.3
six==1.16.0
SQLAlchemy==2.0.23
typing_extensions==4.8.0
urllib3==2.2.2
Werkzeug==3.0.1
WTForms==3.1.2
zipp==3.17.0

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🗺️ Google Maps Integration

The system uses the Google Maps API to:

• Display user-reported incidents.
• Show responder and watcher locations.
• Provide navigation and proximity-based alerts.

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🤝 Contributing Contributions, suggestions, and improvements are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

👨‍💻 Author

Selim Adekola 📧 salimdotpy@gmail.com 📞 +2348076738293