FreshRelay

FreshRelay is a real-time dispatch platform that connects donors, volunteer riders and shelters. It treats expiry time, rider capacity, shelter demand and human unreliability as live variables, preventing spoiled deliveries, eliminating ghost reservations and rerouting automatically when conditions change mid-journey.

Professional description (for the submission form)

The problem. Nearly 40% of donated perishable aid is wasted because supply, transport capacity and shelter demand rarely line up, volunteer claims stall the network, and conditions change mid-delivery.

Our solution. FreshRelay is a coordination, dispatch and safety-enforcement platform for donors, volunteer riders and receiving shelters. It makes time, capacity, compatibility and reliability first-class inputs to every decision.

Key capabilities

Expiry-aware matching: a delivery is dispatched only if pickup plus travel completes before expiry minus a safety buffer, and tight-window batches are flagged with a clear reason. Smart batch splitting: large batches are split across multiple riders, sized to rider capacity and shelter demand. Ghost-reservation prevention: claims are temporary leases kept alive by rider heartbeats. If a rider goes silent, the lease expires and the load is automatically reassigned. The lease shortens as expiry approaches. Live rerouting: when a shelter fills or closes mid-transit, in-transit shipments are redirected to the next feasible shelter, or flagged at risk if none exists. Compatibility rules engine: shipments are blocked from sites that lack required resources, such as clean water for infant formula or cooking fuel for raw ration kits. Failure simulation panel: judges can fast-forward time, make riders unresponsive, close shelters and create tight-expiry batches, then watch the system recover in a live event log.

Tech stack. React + Leaflet frontend, FastAPI backend, an event-driven state machine with a simulated clock, Haversine-based ETAs and polling-based live updates, built and versioned continuously on GitHub.

Impact. Less food and medicine wasted, fewer stranded riders, and faster, safer aid delivery during nightly surplus runs and urban emergencies.