Building CrimeSpots: A Privacy-First Crime Awareness PWA on AWS
About the event
Join AWS User Group Cape Town in September 2026 for the monthly meetup, where we focus on all things AWS! We deep dive into topics related to the cloud on AWS!
🗓️ When 🗓️: Tuesday\, 29 September 2026 \| 18:00 SAST
📍Where 📍: 3rd Floor \| BBD Cape Town Northbank Building, No. 1 N Bank Ln, Century City · Cape Town, ZA How to find us: [Walk-in instructions](https://youtube.com/shorts/tlBwgyA4FEw?) \| [Parking instruction](https://youtube.com/shorts/52xeaEKPFxU)s
📋 Agenda 📋: 18:00 - 18:30: Arrival and Networking 18:30 - 19:00: Welcoming & Community Updates 19:00 - 20:00: Building CrimeSpots: A Privacy-First Crime Awareness PWA on AWS 20:10 onwards: Networking and Snacks
Prizes to be won, food and drinks on us!
🎤 Topic 🎤: Building CrimeSpots: A Privacy-First Crime Awareness PWA on AWS
👤 Speaker 👤: Malachi Mathins
CrimeSpots is a POPIA-compliant crime awareness PWA built for Cape Town, designed around one hard constraint: aggregate the data, never identify anyone. This talk is a practical walkthrough of taking that idea from a personal passion project to a live app running on AWS. It's not a polished case study. It's the real build, rough edges and all.
I'll cover how the pieces fit together: a Next.js 15 frontend hosted on AWS Amplify, MapLibre for the map, Supabase (PostgreSQL with PostGIS, running on AWS infrastructure) for the spatial data, and an ASP.NET Core ingestion API that uses generative AI to turn raw reports into structured, aggregated data. I'll also share the token optimization work that cut projected AI spend, and the privacy-by-design decisions that shaped the data model from day one, because "aggregate, don't identify" changes how you structure everything downstream.
For the demo, I'll run the ingestion API in Docker, show how raw reports become map-ready data, and walk through the live app on Amplify, including what it took to deploy a Next.js 15 app there on a zero budget.
This is for developers who want to see how a solo passion project can go live on AWS without spending money.
We look forward to seeing you at the meetup!
Please keep your RSVP updated if your plans change. This will help us make sure we have the right amount of space and refreshments. We appreciate your help in ensuring a great event for everyone!
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