Telegram bot "Shelter!"

In light of the frequent air alerts throughout Ukraine, a task has arisen: to assist individuals in locating the nearest safe shelter relative to their current location. In other words, no matter where you are when an air alert, you will be able to quickly orient yourself on your smartphone and find a place to take cover. This initiative primarily focuses on the safety of every Ukrainian and the preservation of their lives.

On Saturday, we received a request to develop a Telegram bot that would enable Ukrainians to easily search for nearby shelters. By Monday at lunchtime, we had a fully functional bot ready for use. The data is provided by local authorities, so the information in the bot is reliable.

While efforts are being made to ensure the uninterrupted operation of shelters, we regretfully cannot guarantee that a shelter near your location is currently operational. Therefore, the bot primarily serves as a recommendation tool.

To utilize the bot, simply send your geolocation using the built-in Telegram function. In the menu, you can find step-by-step instructions on how to select your location. If the bot does not find any available shelters, you will receive a message stating that there are no official shelters within a 2 km radius.

The Telegram bot is written in the Go programming language. A serverless solution in the form of Amazon Lambda is used. The MongoDB Atlas cloud service is used as a data store.