Cognitive Locator

The Cognitive Locator project, known publicly as 'Busca.me', is a project dedicated to reporting and finding missing persons. The project was founded due to the disasters related to the earthquake of September 19, 2017, which affected multiple states in Mexico. At first, the project was solely focused on finding or reporting people who went missing as a result of the earthquake. However, now that the project has grown, it not only aims to support the people affected at that time, but to anyone who is going through this devastating situation.

Cognitive Locator is a project hoping that every person can potentially be a medium to report and locate people who have been publicly declared as 'missing'.

The source code of the Cognitive Locator project is under the MIT license, nonetheless, the ‘Busca.me’ team is in charge of the implementation of the project.

This project is non-profit, seeing how it only supports non-governmental organizations that face different cases of disappearances every day.

Architecture

Cognitive Locator is based on Xamarin Forms and Azure platform: Azure Functions, CosmosDB, Storage, Notification Hub, Cognitive Services (Face API).

Run the project

Clone the project from GitHub repo

git clone https://github.com/rcervantes/cognitive-locator.git

Configure Azure resources

For this project is required:

• Azure Storage resource.
• Cosmos DB (Document DB).
• Cognitive Services (Face API).
• Azure Function App.
• Notification Hub.

To run locally the Azure Functions project we need to configure the local settings file, let's go and create a local.settings.json file with the following information:

{
  "IsEncrypted": false,
  "Values": {
    "AzureWebJobsStorage": "AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING",
    "AzureWebJobsDashboard": "AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING",
    "Vision_API_Subscription_Key": "FACE_API_KEY",
    "Vision_API_PersonGroupId": "missingpeople",
    "Vision_API_Zone": "FACE_API_ZONE(e.g. westus or southcentralus)",
    "Vision_API_FaceList": "list",
    "CosmosDB_URI": "COSMOSDB_URI",
    "CosmosDB_AuthKey": "COSMOSDB_KEY",
    "CosmosDB_DatabaseId": "CognitiveLocator",
    "CosmosDB_PersonCollection": "Person",
    "NotificationHub_Access_Signature": "NOTIFICATION_HUB_CONNECTION_STRING",
    "NotificationHub_Name": "NOTIFICTION_HUB_NAME",
    "Cryptography_Key": "CRYPT_KEY",
    "MobileCenterID_Android": "MOBILECENTER_ANDROID_APP_ID",
    "MobileCenterID_iOS": "MOBILECENTER_IOS_APP_ID",
    "ImageStorageUrl": "https://YOUR_STORAGE_ACCOUNT.blob.core.windows.net/images/"
  }
}

Now it's time to create our Face API 'Person Group ID' and 'Face List' for this tasks execute the following requests in the specific API testing console:

Person Group ID Parameters

• personGroupId: missingpeople
• Content-Type: application/json
• Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: FACE_API_KEY
• Zone: Select the same zone where your FACE API has been created
• Link: Person Group - Create a Person Group

Face List Parameters

• faceListId: list
• Content-Type: application/json
• Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: FACE_API_KEY
• Zone: Select the same zone where your FACE API has been created
• Link: Face List - Create a Face List

Now we are ready to run our backend locally.

With the testing console we are able to debug and see how Azure Functions operates and process each person that will be registered or processed for verification, after the application has been tested and validated it's time to deploy to Azure.

Remember all local settings must be replicated on the Azure Function to work properly

Now it's time to configure our Xamarin application to point to our function.

namespace CognitiveLocator
{
    public class Settings
    {
        public static string CryptographyKey = "CRYPT_KEY";
        public static string AzureWebJobsStorage = string.Empty;
        public static string MobileCenterID_Android = string.Empty;
        public static string MobileCenterID_iOS = string.Empty;
        public static string NotificationAccessSignature = string.Empty;
        public static string NotificationHubName = string.Empty;
        public static string ImageStorageUrl = string.Empty;

#if DEBUG
        public const string FunctionURL = "https://YOUR_AZUREFUNCTION.azurewebsites.net";
#else
        public const string FunctionURL = "https://YOUR_AZUREFUNCTION.azurewebsites.net";
#endif
    }
}

The only settings required to be fixed in the mobile app are: CryptographyKey and FunctionURL, the rest of the settings will be provided at runtime by the MobileSettings function.

It's time to run the cognitive locator application

Credits

I want to thank all people who had participated in the first version of this project and those people who still continue participating actively on the contribution of this project.

Development team site: Cognitive Locator (Under Construction)