PetaBencana.id provides residents, government agencies, and first responders with a real-time disaster information sharing system at an unprecedented scale. It is the first platform of its kind to harness the power of crowdsourcing through social media to aid humanitarian response and recovery.
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In July, Indonesia has been simultaneously affected by massive flooding and forest fires; with flooding in Gorontalo affecting more than 36,000 residents, landslides as a result of heavy rain in Central Papua affecting 3,265 people, and forest fires in Aceh, Sumatra Selatan, and Jawa Timur. According to the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Indonesia experienced a 39.39% rise in natural disasters in 2023, with a total of 5,940 events compared to 3,544 the previous year. According to Head of BNPB, Suharyanto, Indonesia now experiences 15-17 disasters every day.
Climate-related disasters have become increasingly frequent and severe, posing significant challenges across the country. While extreme weather events cannot always be prevented, immediate alerts can significantly reduce the impact of disasters by allowing residents and response teams to take swift preventive measures. During a disaster, access to the most up-to-date information is critical for communities to understand what actions can be taken to protect themselves, their families, and their properties.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has highlighted that telecommunications are the future of disaster warning systems. The growing availability and reach of mobile networks and services in particular, make it possible to reach communities at risk and provide people with actionable information. Indonesia is particularly suited to adopt mobile networks for disaster warning systems, with over 80% of the population utilizing internet-connected smartphones, and mobile connections equivalent to over 128% of the total population.
Today in Indonesia, the latest advancements in geospatial technology and AI, combined with the strength of local knowledge, are now being leveraged to deliver real-time notifications and information about ongoing disasters. On July 29th, 2024, Yayasan Peta Bencana, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), publicly launched the first real-time disaster notification service for all residents across Indonesia. The disaster notification service, freely available to all residents through common messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, provides immediate notifications about earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, haze, and extreme wind, including the most up-to-date information about impacts of these disasters as they change in real-time. The notifications are customized based on geographic location, ensuring relevant, localized information for every resident. As the first free, real-time disaster notification service in the world, the innovation demonstrates the leadership of Indonesia in advancing tech for climate adaptation.
Decision support tools for climate adaptation have tended to concentrate information in control rooms, where dashboards are only accessed by small groups of professionals. However, to meet the challenges of the climate emergency, every single resident must be empowered to participate in community-led adaptation efforts. By leveraging the network of mobile phones that we all carry in our pockets, we can ensure that every resident is informed and prepared to adapt to increasingly erratic weather patterns. This service represents a major milestone for disaster risk reduction in Indonesia.
Head of the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), also the Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the World Meteorological Organization – Dwikorita Karnawati, has emphasized that disaster warning systems must be embedded and communicated in ways that are easy to understand, and relevant to the needs of local communities. According to Dwikorita Karnawati, the success of disaster warning systems can be measured by a reduction in the “gap” between information and the community’s ability to act quickly and appropriately. According to Dwikorita Karnawati, “The combination of modernization of tools and technology and local wisdom can be an effective step to minimize the impact of disasters that occur in Indonesia.”
Yayasan Peta Bencana’s disaster notification service integrates data from multiple sources, including local resident observations, leveraging the tacit knowledge of communities, in order to ensure the accuracy, immediacy, and relevance of disaster notifications. As extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity, the need for improved synergy, communication, and coordination between multiple stakeholders is more critical than ever. As Dwikorita Karnawati highlights, warning systems must contain actionable information in order to be effective. To this end, BMKG and Yayasan Peta Bencana have embarked on an exemplary partnership, with each organization’s disaster information systems feeding into eachother, synergizing local wisdom with the latest advancements in technology to improve warning services.
As BMKG warns eastern parts of Indonesia to anticipate heavy rain and potential flooding in the coming months, and western parts of Indonesia to anticipate forest fires in the peak of the dry season, it is more timely than ever to have a service that enables all Indonesians to stay informed on the most up-to-date situations to stay safe.
| At a glance, here is what we achieved together this year: 533 organizations using the data from our platforms; 853 Youth & Climate Ambassadors enrolled; 24,402 Individuals Trained; 26,000% increase in platform activity during disaster events; 171,972,349 users engaged |
| The start of the year marked a significant milestone for Yayasan Peta Bencana, with the launch of WhatsApp’s First Humanitarian Chatbot! Given that 83% of Indonesia’s 171 million internet users use WhatsApp, the launch of DisasterBot on Indonesia’s most used application represents a significant milestone for scaling community engagement in disaster risk reduction and recovery efforts. In 2023, with over 2200 recorded disaster events in Indonesia, community-led information sharing through PetaBencana.id and MapaKalamidad.ph continued to shape disaster response as millions of users accessed the platforms to coordinate for safety and response. During the eruption of Mount Merapi in March 2023, resident reports detailing the amplitude, direction, distance, and duration of pyroclastic flow helped communities in surrounding areas to navigate safely. During the June 2023 earthquake in Yogyakarta, residents informed each other about inaccessible roads and damaged buildings to avoid dangerous areas, while first responders shared updates about rescue, recovery, and rebuilding efforts. This year, we noticed that residents were increasingly using PetaBencana.id to coordinate resource distribution, for example in setting up community kitchens. Beyond a tool for disaster information sharing, PetaBencana.id and MapaKalamidad.ph have become tools for peer-to-peer coordination at a massive scale. We continue to see that in the immediate aftermath of disasters, neighbors are always the first to help each other. By making risk information accessible, open, and actionable, PetaBencana.id and MapaKalamidad.ph address information gaps, reduce disparities, and ensure that all residents have the opportunity to protect themselves and their communities during disasters. Placing the power of data in the hands of communities encourages a collective and proactive approach to disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation. To further support these forms of mutual aid, we are now spearheading the next major phase of our software development; a “crowd logistics” feature dedicated to supporting resource and logistic coordination at a community level. Stay tuned for its release in the new year! PetaBencana.id and MapaKalamidad.ph have continued to support several organizations for emergency planning and response, helping first responders and government agencies to respond more quickly and effectively, including at the national emergency management agencies – BNPB and the Office of Civil Defense. Tracking humanitarian needs by way of resident reports made via social media and through our Humanitarian Chatbot system enables disaster managers and government agencies to see, share, and respond to these reports with unprecedented resolution and speed. According to Theophilus Yanuarto, Public Relations Officer atIndonesia’s National Emergency Management Agency (BNPB): “PetaBencana.id provides critical information for the public to support community-level response and increase public awareness about disaster risks, response, and recovery. The crowdsourced data on PetaBencana.id helps emergency managers at BNPB effectively respond to disasters. It is critical to have increased public participation in disaster information sharing to reduce risk for the nation as a whole.” In a time of increasing extreme weather events, information sharing through open data and open APIs is more vital than ever to enable coordinated decision making across all agencies and networks. In Indonesia, the Meteorological Agency (BMKG), continued to utilize our open data streams and leverage the real-time disaster reports submitted to PetaBencana.id to improve and validate the agency’s Impact Based Forecasting. The crowd-sourced information collected by PetaBencana.id serves as a “ground-truth” for BMKG’s prediction models, providing the granularity and hyper-local information to complement and enrich the agency’s overview of weather patterns. In the Philippines, we have been working with disaster affected communities, scientists, journalists, emergency managers, first responders, academics, aid agencies, and a wide range of experts to collectively extend the MapaKalamidad.ph platform from a real-time flood map to a real-time multi-hazard map. Co-design and integrating local knowledge into DRR tools continue to underly all our work; we are inspired by the enthusiasm of residents in the Philippines to build adaption tools together, for each other. We are excited to announce that in January of the new year, MapaKalamidad.ph will be launched as a multi-hazard disaster mapping platform for all of the Philippines! Stay tuned for more updates! We continued to grow enrollment into our youth and community climate ambassador programs, with now 853 active ambassadors. We are proud and grateful to work with the next generation of leaders, who continue to demonstrate that even though youth are among the most affected by climate-related disasters, they are also leaders of change in their communities. Through the support of our micro-grant programs and their proactive initiatives, our youth and community ambassadors have collectively trained over 12,615 people in disaster preparedness this year alone. From initiating activities ranging from post-disaster psychological risk reduction, to beach cleanups, to first aid trainings, to mobilizing local government commitment to youth preparedness, we are moved at the ways by which young leaders are building stronger communities through contextually embedded actions that stem from lived experience and concerns. According to youth ambassador Arindra Unigraha, “PetaBencana.id has a significant impact on the younger generation in Indonesia, especially in increasing youth agency, engagement and awareness about disaster risk reduction. This is knowledge and support that we typically do not receive at school or at a municipal level – but the gap is now filled by Yayasan Peta Bencana.” Beyond South East Asia, this year our open source software, CogniCity OSS, was extended to support communities in South Asia and Latin America. With UNDP, we ran a successful pilot in Panama, where the real-time reporting platform received several critical reports in just the first week of its release. We are also excited to announce our partnership with re:arc institute for our “SouthxSouthEast Asia” initiative, towards the development of a real-time flood mapping platform for Pakistan. In the aftermath of the devastating floods in 2022 which affected 33 million residents, our teams from Indonesia and the Philippines are collaborating to support the deployment of community-based decision support tools for Pakistan; this is a testament to the strength of open-source software in fostering lateral exchange amongst the Global Majority, advancing more democratic forms of climate adaptation. The collective spirit of gotong-royong in Indonesia, bayanihan in the Philippines, and mutual aid globally, that have been renewed through these challenging times is a testament to the strength of community-led climate adaptation. We thank you for your role in building this impressive community, and we look forward to continue working together to #ReduceRiskTogether in the region, and beyond |
“Can we harness the same gotong-royong in the face of our planet’s changing climate?” – Laura Pennafort, Wildlife Filmmaker
Building on the momentum of the series, Frozen Planet II, BBC’s digital impact campaign, Our Frozen Planet, highlighted PetaBencana’s work as an exemplary model of community-led climate adaption. We are excited to see how the film spotlights the Indonesian spirit of gotong-royong that PetaBencana is inherently founded on!
Watch the full video here
Powered by CogniCity Open Source Software, PetaBencana.id is a free, web-based platform that produces real-time disaster maps using both crowd-sourced reporting and government agency validations. The platform harnesses the heightened use of social media and instant messaging during emergency events to gather confirmed situational updates from street level, in a manner that removes the need for expensive and time consuming data processing. These verified user reports are displayed alongside relevant emergency data collected by local and government agencies. By integrating localized knowledge from a variety of sources into a single, robust platform, PetaBencana.id is able to provide a comprehensive overview of disaster events, enabling residents, humanitarian agencies, and government agencies to make more informed decisions during emergencies.
Since its debut in 2013 (as PetaJakarta.org), the PetaBencana.id platform has been used by millions of resident users to make time-critical decisions about safety and navigation during emergency disaster events; it has also been adopted by the National Emergency Management Agency (BNPB) to monitor flood events, improve response times, and share time-critical emergency information with residents. The platform has enabled greater information sharing and data coordination among residents and government agencies, fostering equitable and collaborative resilience to climate change.
PetaBencana.id has proven that community-led data collection, sharing, and visualization reduces flood risk and assists in relief efforts. In the 2015 World Disaster Report of the International Federation of the Red Cross, the project was recommended as a model for community engagement in relation to disaster response. In 2016, the Federal Communication Commission of the United States also recommended the project as a best practice regarding disaster information crowdsourcing.
2018
Mahtani N. and E. Turpin. “Neuroecologies of Attention & Intelligence in the Megacity: Learning with PetaBencana.id,” in Perspecta 51: Becoming Media The Yale Architectural Journal, November 2018.
2017
Mahtani, Nashin. “Impressions of Disaster: Neuroscience, Design, and Attention
in Post-Internet Indonesia,” in e-flux Architecture, August, 2017.
2016
Turpin, E., and T. Holderness. “From Social Media to GeoSocial Intelligence: Experiments with Crowdsourcing Civic Co-Management for Flood Response in Jakarta, Indonesia,” in Social Media for Government Services, eds. Surya Nepal, Cécile Paris, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos (Springer, 2016).
Holderness, T., and E. Turpin, “How tweeting about floods became a civic duty in Jakarta,” in The Guardian, Public Leaders Network, 25 January 2016.
2015
Holderness T. and E. Turpin. “Floods in Jakarta? Tweeting Now,” in Strategic Review 5.1(October-December 2015): 26-35.
Holderness T., and E. Turpin. PetaJakarta.org: Assessing the Role of Social Media for Civic
Co-Management During Monsoon Flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia, SMART Infrastructure Facility, University of Wollongong, GeoSocial Intelligence Working Group White Paper 01 (June 2015).
2014
Turpin, E., T. Holderness, and G. Quaggiotto. “Combining ‘Big’ and ‘Small’ Data to Build Urban Resilience in Jakarta,” United Nations Global Pulse Blog, April 2014.
2013
Turpin, E., A. Bobbette, and M. Miller, eds. Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Depok: Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013).
The PetaBencana.id community is made up of a diverse group of volunteers, local community leaders, and professionals dedicated to building capacities for community-based disaster co-management. There are a number of ways to get involved!
Support open data & open software for climate adaptation:
Help us keep the map running as a free platform, so that everyone in Indonesia can have access to time critical information!
To donate via wire transfer, please email info@petabencana.id.
Become a Sustaining Partner:
Partner with Yayasan Peta Bencana to increase employee engagement and Corporate Social Responsibility Programs! We also work with organisations to provide customized alerts to ensure the safety of your belongings and staff.
Become a Risk Ambassador:
Are you passionate about spreading disaster awareness and increasing preparedness in your communities? Sign up to become a risk ambassador – no experience needed, we will provide you the support you need!
Technology and Training:
Yayasan Peta Bencana provides training to organizations, embassies, schools, and volunteer communities. Through digital literacy workshops we provide the necessary skills to safely and easily access and share time-critical information – leveraging capacities for everyone to participate in critical decision-making and boost community resilience. We can customize training to meet the needs of your organization.
Sign up for a training by sending us an email at info@petabencana.id!
Volunteer:
Contact us for current volunteer activities, or if you would like to get involved in other ways! We would love to hear from you!
Bring the crowd-sourced disaster mapping platform to your location:
The platform is now being further developed to address additional hazards and other geographies in South East Asia. If you would like to see a crowd-sourced disaster mapping platform implemented in your area, please contact us at info@petabencana.id.