Efficient Proximity-Based Alerting

A non-transitory computer-readable medium, having stored thereon program instructions that, upon execution by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations comprising:

• determining that a requester device is in a state for a response;
• based on the requester device being in the state for the response, determining respective values for each of a plurality of potential responder devices, wherein for a particular responder device of the potential responder devices, a particular value is based on a weighted combination of:
• physical distance between the requester device and the particular responder device, temporal recentness of location updates received from the particular responder device, and similarity of affiliations of the requester device and the particular responder device;
• determining that the particular value for the particular responder device meets a threshold criterion;
• and
• transmitting a notification to the particular responder device indicating that a responder associated with the particular responder device should provide the response to a requester associated with the requester device.

A computing system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• memory, containing program instructions that, upon execution by the one or more processors, cause the computing system to perform operations comprising:
• determining that a requester device is in a state for a response;
• based on the requester device being in the state for the response, determining respective values for each of a plurality of potential responder devices, wherein for a particular responder device of the potential responder devices, a particular value is based on a weighted combination of:
• physical distance between the requester device and the particular responder device, temporal recentness of location updates received from the particular responder device, and similarity of affiliations of the requester device and the particular responder device;
• determining that the particular value for the particular responder device meets a threshold criterion;
• and
• transmitting a notification to the particular responder device indicating that a responder associated with the particular responder device should provide the response to a requester associated with the requester device.