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CogniCity

CogniCity OSS is a free and open source software for community-led disaster response and recovery in highly dense urban environments. Designed, tested, and operationally deployed in Southeast Asia’s monsoon flooding, the system uses a novel humanitarian chatbot model to crowdsource disaster information through social media channels and then gathers, sorts, and displays these solicited reports in real-time on a web-based, mobile-centric map. The system operates as critical urban infrastructure that enables robust, reliable information sharing and communication among residents, government agencies, and first responders.
Following successful city-scale deployments, CogniCity.Info was expanded to the national scale in Indonesia and developed for additional hazards including volcanoes, earthquakes, typhoons, fires, and severe weather. It was also piloted in Metro Manila and then deployed for all hazards at the national scale in the Philippines. Other test instances are currently being developed in Vietnam, Hong Kong, and India. As a crowdsourcing system that goes far beyond passive data mining, CogniCity.Info is a proven, enterprise-level software for soliciting disaster information and displaying heterogeneous data in an accessible format, as well as durable infrastructure for climate change adaptation.



To raise awareness for the International Disaster Risk Reduction Day on 13 October 2022, Yayasan Peta Bencana’s Director Nashin Mahtani joined the Southeast Asia Today News team to explain exactly how CogniCity OSS works to enable and expand disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery in Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond. Please share it widely.






In 2020, the M+ Museum of Visual Culture acquired the source code of CogniCity.Info for its collection of 21st century urban design and commissioned a film about the project. To raise awareness about open source infrastructure for climate change adaptation, M+ has generously allowed us to screen the short film The Same River, Twice online. Please share it with anyone who might be interested in community-led humanitarian coordination and climate change adaptation. You can also visit M+ in Hong Kong to see the two-channel film installation in person!