This site lets you know when Jakarta’s streets turn to rivers

Jakarta has long been notorious for flash flooding that occurs between November and April every year due to its poor physical infrastructure. The archipelago’s rainy season turns streets into rivers and causes massive problems for commuters and residents alike.

However, the city now has a digital solution for warning citizens about when and where floods are occuring so they can take preventative action, local news portal Detik reported.

The app is called Peta Jakarta (Map Jakarta) and uses social media to gather, sort, and display information about flooding for Jakarta residents and government agencies in real time. It runs on open source software CogniCity, a geosocial intelligence framework developed by the SMART Infrastructure Facility of the University of Wollongong in Australia. The software allows situational information to be collected and disseminated by community members through their location-enabled mobile devices.

See: Facilitating communication during the Jakarta floods

When someone sees a flood in Jakarta, all they have to do is tweet #banjir @petajkt (meaning #flood and @MapJKT) and a report will appear on the site’s map. This two-way, time-critical information communicated to and from individuals and government agencies will allow the city to more efficiently prepare for and cope with the destruction caused by the floods.

The initiative is serving as a pilot study for the university’s research on urban resilience and adaptation to climate change in developing nations. Peta Jakarta hopes to change the way citizens and government sort out infrastructural pain points in an effort to save lives. The goal is also to let the city understand where it needs to focus its construction and renovation efforts. If successful, the software will be deployed in other Southeast Asian megacities, in various languages, and for other urban problems.