During the Hackathon on 29 June at the City of Amsterdam, the (prototype) app 'HuisMatch' (HouseMatch) was awarded as the best app developed on the CitySDK mobility-API. Time to find out what this app can do! This is what the developers behind the application say about it:
The idea behind HuisMatch
by Bart Klein, Marco Buijs and Jochem van Kats
HouseMatch helps people in finding a new place to live that really suits them. The basic idea is that HouseMatch creates a profile of the user and uses this information to directly show how a chosen location performs.
Prototype
The idea was born on the way to the Hackathon. Once at the Hackathon, we followed the CitySDK workshop and directly afterwards started building the prototype. We took the work location as an example of the kind of information that HouseMatch can ask to build a profile of the user. The user can also point out which aspects of the location of the new house are important, we have called these the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In this way, we are able to show only the most relevant results.
After this first selection screen, the user will get to the location selection screen, showing a map (in our prototype focused on the centre of Amsterdam). One can use the map to add the desired location. We used the OpenStreetMap for this.
After selecting a location, the results screen is loaded, that should give the user a better insight how suitable this particular location is. In our prototype the distances and travel times are mentioned to the selected KPIs, like the time it takes to commute to the work location of the user. With the aid of open travel data the nearest bust stop is showed, for other data the OpenStreetMaps layer is used. Furthermore we use Google Maps API to calculate travel times and distances, using the actual roads. By using icons we aim to give a quick overview of the results.
The prototype of HouseMatch is an example how profile information can be used to match the preferences of the user.
About CitySDK
Who has ever tried to develop an app based on several Open Data sources, will have find out that it can be very difficult to combine those sets, because they all have a different format. That’s where the CitySDK API comes in! Because of the international project CitySDK, several European cities are now able to open up their data in a uniform and easy manner. More information about the project can be found at citysdk.eu.
