Emergency Shelter Finder Development: Open Shelters, Capacity, and Routes in a Disaster

What the project is

A shelter is a facility opened during a disaster: a school, a hall, a sports centre, staffed and stocked to receive evacuees. The finder holds a registry of potential shelters, with their capacity, accessibility, pet policy, medical facilities, and supplies. During a disaster, open shelters report their current occupancy, and the finder shows evacuees the open shelters near them, with capacity, facilities, and directions, updated as the situation changes.

Capacity honesty is the central problem. A shelter that reports space it does not have sends evacuees to a closed door; a shelter that under-reports leaves beds empty while another site overflows. The finder therefore needs a simple, fast capacity update path for shelter staff, ideally a single number updated regularly, and it must show when each shelter's capacity was last updated, so evacuees can judge whether the number is fresh.

Core features

Fresh capacity data is the feature. A finder with yesterday's capacity is a map of where shelters used to be, not where evacuees should go now.

• Shelter registry with location, capacity, accessibility, pet policy, medical facilities, and supplies per site.
• Live capacity updates from shelter staff, with a timestamp showing when each figure was last updated.
• Evacuee search by location, showing open shelters nearest first, with capacity and facilities filters.
• Routing and transport information: directions, road closures affecting routes, and transport assistance where offered.
• Registration and check-in support for shelter staff, so occupancy is counted from arrivals rather than estimated.
• Special needs flags: medical needs, accessibility, pets, and unaccompanied minors, handled per shelter's capability.
• Coordination integration: shelter status feeding the disaster coordination picture, so resource requests follow capacity.

How it is built

Build the shelter staff update path first, with shelter managers, not the evacuee search. If staff cannot update capacity in seconds, the finder will be stale within hours.

1. Registry study: list potential shelters, their capacities, facilities, and activation criteria, with the agencies that run them.
2. Staff tools: capacity updates, check-in, and status changes, tested with shelter managers in an exercise.
3. Evacuee finder: search, filters, and routing, tested with members of the public on realistic scenarios.
4. Coordination integration: shelter status feeding disaster coordination and resource requests.
5. Readiness routine: annual registry review and exercise, because shelters change, close, and gain new facilities.

Tech considerations

The technical core is a simple staff update flow and a fast public search. Everything else supports those two.

• Simple capacity update tools for shelter staff, usable on a phone, with offline tolerance for sites with poor connectivity.
• Public search with location, filters, and routing, designed for stressed users on mobile connections.
• Capacity timestamps on every figure, so evacuees see freshness, not just a number.
• Road closure integration where available, so routes avoid closed roads.
• Role-based access for shelter staff, coordinators, and the public, with audit trails on status changes.

Challenges to plan for

Shelter finders fail on stale capacity and on shelters that open without the finder knowing. Both send evacuees to the wrong place at the worst time.

• Stale capacity: a shelter that stops updating looks available when it is full, and evacuees arrive to a closed door.
• Unregistered shelters: community shelters that open spontaneously will not be in the registry, and evacuees need a path to find them too.
• Transport gaps: an evacuee without a car cannot use directions alone, and transport assistance information must be part of the finder.
• Accessibility mismatches: a shelter listed as accessible that cannot actually receive a wheelchair user creates a second evacuation.

Who it is for, and honest limits

This fits emergency management agencies, local governments, and relief organisations that operate shelters. It fits less well for a single shelter operating alone, where a phone line and a sign at the door may honestly be enough.

It does not open shelters or staff them. It shows evacuees where to go and shows coordinators where capacity remains. If shelter capacity itself is insufficient, the finder will show that plainly, which is the evidence for opening more sites.

Frequently asked questions