RiskMap (MIT Urban Risk Lab) is a real-time disaster coordination platform that shares time-critical information between residents and government. It uses citizen reporting and social media to publish geolocated reports on a live public map, without requiring users to install a new app or receive training. The platform integrates reports from channels such as Twitter/Facebook/Telegram (and in some deployments LINE), and can also display real-time sensor data (e.g., flood gauges). Use cases include high-intensity rainfall events (Jakarta 2017; Chennai 2017) and post-hurricane flooding response (Broward County).
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RiskMap (MIT Urban Risk Lab)
General information
RiskMap is an open, transparent, web-based platform that collects verified, real-time disaster reports from citizens via social media/chatbots and visualizes them on an interactive map.
Residents report hazards (e.g., flood location/depth, road closures, storm damage) and the map helps communities avoid danger and navigate to safety.
Emergency managers can use the same data stream (and, in some deployments, a dedicated dashboard) to support situational awareness and response planning.
RiskMap was created to address a common gap in disasters: official information can be delayed or incomplete at street level, while residents on the ground often have the most localized, rapidly changing knowledge (flooded streets, passable routes, urgent needs).
By turning “citizens into sensors” and structuring incoming reports through chatbots/cards, RiskMap produces a live, shared operating picture that supports both community self-help and formal emergency management. Deployments have focused on flood-prone urban/coastal areas (e.g., Greater Jakarta; Chennai; Broward County) and have expanded to include storm/typhoon-related reporting and shelter management modules.
Status
Purpose
Topics For Preparedness
Hazard Type
Geographical Scope - Nuts
Geographical Scope
Population Size
Population Density
Needs Addressed
RiskMap addresses the lack of fast, trusted, street-level situational awareness during disasters (especially floods and storms). It enables residents to quickly submit structured reports (location, depth/damage, photos, descriptions) through familiar social channels, and publishes these on a live map that both the public and emergency managers can use to coordinate actions, warnings, routing, and rescue prioritization.
In flood and storm emergencies, RiskMap-type real-time information sharing is particularly relevant for vulnerable groups who have reduced mobility, higher health risks, or weaker access to timely information (children, older adults, people with disabilities, and migrants/newcomers). Live, localized reporting on passable routes, flooded roads, shelter status, and urgent needs can help these groups (and their caregivers/support networks) make safer decisions and reach assistance faster.
Across Indonesia, India, Japan, Thailand, and the United States, disaster-risk governance generally combines national coordination with decentralized implementation and multi-stakeholder cooperation. Indonesia is led nationally by BNPB with strong local implementation; India follows the Disaster Management Act (2005) with a multi-level system (national–state–district) led by NDMA; Japan under the Basic Act on Disaster Management, balancing central steering operates with strong local responsibilities; Thailand is coordinated by DDPM under the 2007 Act with multi-agency and local involvement; and the United States is highly decentralized, led by states/localities with federal support through national frameworks and a “whole community” approach.
All five countries have structured preparedness systems, but at different levels. Japan and the United States are generally advanced, with comprehensive national frameworks that scale from routine incidents to major disasters. Indonesia and Thailand rely on organised, plan-based preparedness built around national plans and coordination bodies, with effectiveness varying by region and hazard exposure. India also follows a national plan-based system under the 2005 Act, with stronger capacity in some states and large cities but more uneven preparedness across the country.
Infrastructure readiness across these countries ranges from developed to advanced resilient, depending on national resilience policies, investment, and local capacity. Japan is often considered advanced resilient thanks to dedicated national resilience frameworks and long-term investment in risk reduction and critical systems. The United States is also oriented toward advanced resilience, supported by national coordination and collaboration with infrastructure owners/operators. Indonesia, India, and Thailand are generally developed: they have national planning and coordination systems for disaster-related infrastructure, but actual resilience and service continuity vary widely by region, urbanisation, and hazard exposure.
To create a two-way flow of time-critical information: residents share verified ground conditions (flood depth, road status, storm damage), while authorities can use the shared map/dashboard to coordinate response, communicate alerts/updates, and improve operational decisions during rapidly changing events.
Web-based live maps; automated chatbots/cards for structured reporting; integration with social platforms (e.g., Twitter/Facebook/Telegram and LINE in some deployments); and, where available, emergency-management dashboards that consume the same data stream.
Residents meaningfully influence the shared situational picture by creating and updating the map through reports, which can shape how communities route, self-organize, and request help. Decision-making authority for formal actions (deploying rescue assets, opening roads, issuing official instructions) remains primarily with government agencies, but RiskMap increases community influence by improving visibility of needs and enabling faster prioritisation based on real-time evidence
Across Indonesia, India, Japan, Thailand, and the United States, capacity-building and long-term empowerment focus on strengthening both professional response capacity (training systems, institutions, standardized procedures) and community readiness (education, drills, and volunteer involvement). Indonesia and Thailand emphasize community-based DRR and local volunteer capacity; India relies on national DRM institutions and training to spread skills and awareness; Japan reinforces empowerment through a strong culture of preparedness education and drills supported by national frameworks; and the United States combines FEMA-led training systems with community programs like CERT to build sustained public preparedness alongside emergency services.
Vulnerable Groups
Governance
Emergency Preparedness
Infrastructure Readiness
Engagement Level
Empowerment Level
Implementation
- Real-time crowd-sourced disaster mapping (“citizens as sensors”) with structured chatbot-based reporting
- Verification and visualization of reports on an interactive public map; integration of social media and messaging platforms
- Optional integration of real-time sensors; and development of custom decision-support dashboards (e.g., RED) aligned with government response protocols.
English; Japanese; Thai
- MIT Urban Risk Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) — core implementing organisation responsible for developing and deploying RiskMap across countries, often together with local partners.
- Local implementing partners (by deployment, where specified):
- Indonesia: implemented with national/local disaster-management partners and later transitioned/handed over to Yayasan PetaBencana (local organisation) for continued operation.
- India (Chennai): reactivation and local implementation supported with partners such as IIT Madras and civil-society resilience actors (as listed on the project pages).
- Japan: deployment implemented with local partners (including actors linked to the Japan section on the RiskMap site).
- Thailand: local implementing organisation(s) beyond the RiskMap team are INFO NOT AVAILABLE on the cited project pages.
- United States (Broward County): implemented with local emergency-management partners in Broward County alongside the RiskMap team
The MIT Urban Risk Lab (MIT) shows high experience in DRRM because it has designed, deployed, and operated RiskMap across multiple countries and real disaster contexts, working directly with emergency management stakeholders and integrating crowdsourced reports with operational/decision-support tools (e.g., agency dashboards). Its multi-year deployments and continuous platform evolution toward multi-hazard and preparedness functions further indicate strong, sustained DRRM capability.
- Residents / local communities who submit and share real-time reports (via social media and messaging platforms) and use the public map to navigate hazards.
- Local disaster managers & emergency management authorities using the platform for situational awareness and coordination (e.g., Broward County and its related departments; Kumamoto City in Japan).
- National disaster management agencies (notably Indonesia’s BNPB) involved in operational coordination and integration with early-warning/decision-support systems.
- Implementing research team: MIT Urban Risk Lab (MIT) (project design, platform development, deployment support, dashboards).
- Local/academic & civil-society partners supporting pilots and reactivations (e.g., IIT Madras, CAG Chennai, SEED India, Resilient Chennai / 100RC).
- Funders / private-sector & institutional supporters enabling deployments (e.g., USAID, Pacific Disaster Center (PDC), LINE Corp, Bangkok Bank, TATA Center/TATA Trusts), plus integrations with external tools/platforms (e.g., PDC’s InAWARE; Uber embedding during Jakarta flooding is reported)
- Establish local partnerships (government/supporters) and configure the platform for local hazards and reporting categories.
- Collect citizen reports via social media/messaging (often through chatbots/cards) and ingest complementary data streams (where available).
- Verify/structure reports and publish them on the live public map for community use.
- Provide government-facing decision support (e.g., RED dashboard) and align with operational protocols for response and communication.
- Iterate and expand (multi-hazard features, weather/ML-based outreach, alerts) based on lessons from events.
Core requirements include internet connectivity and widespread use of social platforms/smartphones, plus a technical and moderation/verification capacity to operate the system during events. Sustained deployment typically needs local institutional partners (for adoption and operational use) and a mix of funding/support for development and maintenance (e.g., sponsor support and partner institutions cited across deployments).
RiskMap deployments run as standing platforms that become highly active during peak events. Typical phases include:
- Localisation and partner setup
- Preparedness/outreach and configuration
- Real-time activation for reporting/verification/mapping during an incident
- Post-event analysis/iteration and feature expansion (e.g., toward multi-hazard and predictive outreach).
Experience of the Implementing Organisation in DRM
Target Audience
Resources Required
Timeframe & Phases
Participation Results
Real-time civic data can significantly improve shared situational awareness when it is easy to submit (no app download, familiar channels) and when reports are structured and verified. Strong partnerships with emergency management agencies increase operational value (dashboards/protocol alignment), while localization (language, hazard categories) is crucial for adoption.
Key challenges include ensuring data quality/verification at scale, sustaining participation outside peak moments, integrating with official workflows, and adapting the platform to different hazards and languages. Adaptive strategies described across sources include using structured chatbot prompts to standardize reports, verifying and mapping reports in real time, building custom dashboards aligned to government protocols, and developing ML/weather-driven outreach to improve preparedness before storms peak.
Mitigation is primarily achieved through:
- Structured data collection (chatbots/cards) to reduce ambiguity
- Verification and curation before/while publishing to the live map
- Government-facing dashboards and sensor integrations where available
- Expansion to multi-hazard reporting categories (e.g., road closures, storm/typhoon damage) to remain useful across different emergencies
Risk & Mitigation Plan
Scalability and Sustainability
RiskMap is positioned as an open, transparent platform supported through local partnerships and sponsor/partner funding across deployments, with an emphasis on building local capacity and, in some cases, transferring stewardship to local organisations (e.g., handover model referenced for Indonesia’s instance).
The platform is designed to scale by leveraging widely used social channels (lower adoption friction) and a web-based interface, while adapting through modular reporting categories (floods, road closures, storm damage), dashboards for different agency workflows, and ongoing enhancements (weather integration, ML outreach, multi-hazard expansion)
RiskMap combines geospatial web mapping with automated chatbots and social/messaging platform integrations to generate structured, real-time incident data. It can incorporate sensor feeds and is being extended with weather data and machine learning to improve outreach and preparedness. Some deployments also include shelter management chatbots and government decision-support dashboards.
Typical direct costs include platform development/localisation (hazard categories, language), server/hosting, chatbot integrations, and dashboard development for agency users. INFO NOT AVAILABLE: exact budget figures are not published on the accessible project pages
Operational costs include maintaining integrations (social platforms/sensors), moderating and verifying incoming reports during events, updating data layers, technical maintenance, and coordination with partner agencies for activation and communications. INFO NOT AVAILABLE: exact annual operational cost figures are not provided on the accessible pages.
Long-term sustainability depends on:
- Embedding the platform into local response protocols (so it is used by agencies, not only the public),
- Maintaining trust through verification and clear reporting formats,
- Building local capacity/stewardship models so day-to-day operation does not rely solely on external teams. Multi-hazard expansion and proactive outreach (weather/ML) can also keep the platform relevant beyond single-event flood mapping.