Date of Award

5-23-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Yi Fang

Abstract

Selecting suitable housing is a critical yet often overwhelming aspect of the college experience, particularly for incoming students who lack access to transparent and meaningful information about residential life. Existing platforms, such as official university housing portals or external real estate websites, fail to capture the nuanced, day-to-day experiences that influence student well-being, including cleanliness, social atmosphere, and sense of community. This issue is further compounded by the growing prevalence of remote decision-making and scattered, unverified sources of housing feedback.

To address this challenge, we developed BroncoNest, a scalable, cross-platform mobile application designed to centralize and personalize the student housing search process. Built using Flutter and Firebase, the platform integrates both on-campus and off-campus housing data, incorporating verified student reviews and intelligent filtering mechanisms. At its core, BroncoNest employs a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model, hosted on a Flask-based Python backend and deployed via Firebase Cloud Functions, to deliver AI-driven housing recommendations tailored to user preferences.

The system supports role-based access control (RBAC), ensuring content authenticity and moderation through institutional oversight. Students authenticate using their university-issued email addresses, enabling them to contribute structured reviews, engage in real-time chat with peers, and save personalized housing selections. Additionally, university administrators are provided tools to manage listings and monitor platform activity. The backend architecture leverages Firestore for real-time database operations and Pinecone for vector-based similarity search, allowing the AI assistant to rank listings according to review-derived attributes.

By combining robust data infrastructure with machine learning and user-centered design, BroncoNest enhances transparency, fosters student connection, and supports informed housing decisions within the university ecosystem.

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