Urban Risk Map harnesses the power of citizen reporting and social media to map time-critical information without needing to install any new applications or training. Currently operating in three countries - Indonesia, India and the United States - this platform connects residents, who often have the best-localized information, with emergency managers to drastically cut down on response times.  Through the live map, residents are also able to inform each other about dynamically changing situations in the city and help each other navigate to safety. The platform currently works with Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram and also visualizes real-time sensor information, such as changing water levels in flood gauges, monitoring wells and pumping stations.

This platform was widely shared and used during high-intensity rainfall event in Jakarta on February 21, 2017, when over 300,000 residents used the website to navigate the flooded city. The public map was also embedded in the Uber app for drivers to help them travel safely through the city. Similarly, in Chennai during a high-intensity single day rainfall event on November 2, 2017, the Riskmap.in website received 1152 page views a minute at its peak and 111,808 page views in 24 hours. 

Current research work also focuses on extending the system beyond flooding to include multiple hazards types and developing custom decision support tools for the governments. We are actively working on integrating weather data and leveraging machine learning to automate outreach to inform residents to prepare before the peak of the storm, which enhances the two-way communication capabilities of this platform. 

PROJECT LOCATIONS

RiskMap Thailand is supported by Bangkok Bank and is aimed at connecting local Disaster Managers with local communities to facilitate realtime flood information sharing. It supports public reporting of road closures, typhoon damage in addition to flooding.

Supported by : Bangkok Bank

Riskmap Japan is supported by LINE Corp, and had a beta-launch in May 2019 in Kumamoto, Japan. In addition to public reporting, Riskmap Japan also features a chatbot based system for shelter management.

Supported by: Line Corp, Kumamoto City, Hayashi-ULVAC MISTI Seed Fund

Riskmap India is a collective-sensing platform that gathers confirmed flood reports from social media and messaging platforms. These reports are then added to a publicly available map helping inform communities about the flood situation in real time. Riskmap was piloted in Chennai (2017 to 2019) in partnership with CAG, and 100 Resilient Cities Network. During the seasonal flooding, Riskmap saw widespread use in which residents shared real-time flood information to help each other navigate to safety. This project highlight the potential of civic data gathered and sorted from various social media platforms to generate a common operating picture for governments and communities.

Supported by: MIT TATA Center for Technology and Design, TATA Trusts

Partners:  CAG, chennai, Resilient Chennai (100 RC Cities), SEED India, IIT-Madras

PAST PROJECTS

INDONESIA

2016 - 2019

 

This project, supported by USAID, the Indonesia’s National Agency for Disaster Management and in collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center at the University of Hawaii, allows residents to share vital flood information using social messaging apps. Confirmed flood reports are added to a publicly available map helping to inform communities and emergency agencies of the flood situation in real-time.

Operating in four cities, Greater Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Semarang, the flood map feeds the crowdsourced data to emergency managers and PDC’s Disaster Management Early Warning platform called InAWARE through a custom-built REM (Risk Evaluation Matrix).

In 2019, This project was handed over to Yayasan Petabencana.

Yayasan PetaBencana : Etienne Turpin, Pritta Andrani Widyanarko, Dika Fadmastuti, Christina Geros, Nashin Mahtani, Emir Hartato.

Supported by: USAID, Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana, Pacific Disaster Center

Across The Cloud: Matthew Berryman

 
 
 

This project, supported by Broward County, had a beta-launch in October to respond to the flooding caused by Hurricane Irma. We will be working with Broward County to fully deploy Riskmap.us for future hurricane induced flooding as well as tidal and sunny-day flood occurrences in Broward county, Florida.

Supported by: Broward County

 
 

Contributors
Miho Mazereeuw, Tomas Holderness, Matthew Berryman (Across The Cloud), Mayank Ojha, Aditya Barve, Abraham Quintero, Manaasa Priyaa Dharmapuri Sridhar, Evan Owens, Saeko Nomura-Baird, Isreal Macias, Christina Liao, Eakapob Huangthanapan

 
 

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