ResQHub

During localized crises, community-based organizations and informal mutual aid groups often rely on fragmented communication channels such as social media and messaging groups to coordinate assistance. This makes it difficult to match available resources with community needs, verify requests, track donated goods and coordinate volunteers effectively. Existing disaster management platforms are often too complex for grassroots organizations, leaving smaller communities particularly affected by the digital divide and resource inequity.

ResQHub addresses this problem through a lightweight, multi-tenant platform that brings community members, donors, volunteers and community-based organizations into one coordinated system. A mobile application allows users to request help, offer resources, and track their activities, while volunteers can register and manage assigned relief tasks. A web application provides coordinators and administrators with centralized dashboards for verifying requests, managing inventory, coordinating volunteers, assigning tasks and monitoring fulfilment. The platform follows a microservices-based architecture, with REST APIs for service communication, WebSockets for real-time updates, Kafka for asynchronous event-driven communication and PostgreSQL for reliable data management. Role based access control and multi-tenancy are incorporated to protect sensitive community data and isolate organizations using the platform.

ResQHub was designed around the idea of connecting “haves” with “needs” during localized crises such as floods, landslides or other community level emergencies.

The system has two primary interfaces:

Mobile Application - Community & Volunteer Interface: Community members can submit help requests. Users can offer resources as donations. Users can track the status of their requests and donations. Registered volunteers can view assigned tasks and update their progress. The platform supports real-time notifications for relevant activities. Offline-first capabilities are considered for environments with limited connectivity. Web Application - Coordinator & Administrator Interface: Verify and approve community help requests. Verify and manage resource donations. Track donated resources through inventory management. Create and assign volunteer tasks. Monitor task and request progress. Provide reporting around need vs fulfilment. Manage organizations and their operational activities.

Architecture & Methodology

The platform is structured as a full stack, multi-tenant SaaS system using independently deployable backend services. The frontend applications communicate through an API Gateway, which routes requests to the appropriate Node.js + Express microservices.

The main architectural components include:

Frontend → API Gateway → Microservices → Data Access Layer → PostgreSQL

with Kafka supporting asynchronous communication and WebSockets supporting real-time updates. External services are used where appropriate for capabilities such as email, push notifications, maps and file storage. Security is handled through JWT-based authentication and role based authorization, allowing the system to distinguish between ordinary users, volunteers, coordinators and organization administrators while maintaining organization-level data isolation.

Key Challenges

One of the main challenges was designing the system around different types of users while keeping the experience simple. A community member should not need to understand organizational structures simply to request help or donate resources, while coordinators and administrators require significantly more operational control. Another challenge was designing the multi-tenant data model, ensuring that multiple organizations can use the same platform while maintaining logical isolation of their operational data. The system also needs to maintain reliable resource and request states during high demand situations, making database consistency, concurrent operations and real-time state updates important architectural considerations.

Expected Outcome & Future Work

The project aims to deliver a deployment ready prototype capable of supporting simulated high traffic crisis scenarios while maintaining data integrity and reliable coordination. Future development can focus on improving offline synchronization, expanding real-time capabilities, optimizing the platform for larger numbers of organizations and users and evaluating its performance under increasingly demanding crisis scenarios.

The core goal is simple: replace fragmented crisis coordination with a structured system that makes it easier to identify needs, mobilize resources and get assistance to the people who need it.