Smart Campus Hub: Design and Implementation of a Unified Student Welfare and Emergency Response Platform

Abstract

Engineering campuses in India host thousands of students navigating a complex web of daily logistical, safety, and social challenges. Despite widespread smartphone adoption, most campus services remain scattered across notice boards, WhatsApp groups, and manual complaint registers. This paper presents Smart Campus Hub (SCH), a full-stack, multi-role web and mobile platform that unifies five essential student welfare services: (i) a geo-tagged Lost & Found system with image-based item reporting, (ii) a one-tap SOS Panic Alert with real-time GPS broadcast via Firebase Cloud Messaging, (iii) a preference-weighted Roommate Finder powered by a cosine- similarity matching algorithm, (iv) a role-based digital Complaint Management system with 48- hour auto-escalation, and (v) a moderated peer-to-peer academic Marketplace for second-hand books, notes, and gadgets. Built on a RESTful microservice-influenced architecture with a React.js frontend, Python Flask backend, and a MySQL/Firebase hybrid data layer, the system achieves sub-300ms API response times and supports over 500 concurrent users. Security is enforced through JWT-based authentication, AES-256 encryption at rest, and TLS 1.3 in transit. Pilot evaluation on 1,200 student records demonstrates a 68% reduction in complaint resolution time, a 74% improvement in lost-item recovery rate, and 91% SOS alert delivery success. Future directions include NLP chatbot assistance, facial recognition attendance, AI-based image matching, and UPI payment integration.