A Coastal Safety Platform
**A Coastal Safety Platform**
The My Coast platform was created to address a significant issue: how to safely enjoy the breathtaking Cornish coastline and explore its beautiful beaches with your family.
**The Challenge**
To incorporate all the necessary features for the My Coast platform, Flowmoco needed to integrate daily data from various sources including the RNLI, The MET Office, Marine Coastguard, South-West Water, and the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter. This task was complicated by the absence of APIs (interfaces), as data was only available through daily PDF files. Additionally, the project faced other obstacles, such as a tight development schedule of 6-8 weeks and a constrained budget.
**The Technology**
Flowmoco's Technical Architects and Developers initiated the project by setting up a Wagtail CMS in the cloud, which connected to a PostgreSQL database. This allowed My Coast staff to create and manage beach-related information effectively. To process the daily PDF files from South-West Water, RNLI, and The Met Office and extract relevant data, an AWS 'Textract' tool was used. The Django framework facilitated data processing, enabling accessibility for the mobile app through a GraphQL interface. Navigation and distance data were obtained from Google, while mapping information came from Ordnance Survey using APIs. For backend services, we integrated Firebase for analytics and push notifications to the My Coast app. We also utilized Hasura to efficiently create an authenticated GraphQL API layer that connects to the PostgreSQL database and aggregates data from various sources. Flowmoco now hosts and maintains the My Coast platform on AWS cloud services.
For a complete PDF version of this case study, please reach out to contact@flowmo.co.