Heat Safety & Cooling Center Locator

During extreme heat events, people struggle to find nearby cooling centers, water parks, and safe shelters. Build a real-time map app that aggregates cooling center locations, operating hours, and crowding data, with alerts for dangerous heat warnings in your area.

Extreme heat is now the leading weather-related cause of death in the US, and the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome and repeated Phoenix-area emergencies have pushed municipal emergency management onto the national agenda — cities are actively looking for better public communication tools, which creates a real opening for a lightweight aggregator. No clear incumbent owns this space; FEMA's tools are clunky and city-run pages are fragmented and outdated. The revenue band is realistic but constrained: the most credible path is B2G contracts with counties or public health departments, which are slow to close and capped in value, making $1k–5k/month achievable but probably a ceiling unless you expand into adjacent emergency services. The biggest risk is data freshness — cooling centers open and close on short notice, and if the map shows a closed location to someone in a heat emergency, the liability exposure and trust damage are severe enough to kill the product outright.