Siti OSS

Situational Intelligence Open Source Software

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Siti OSS (formerly CogniCity) is a free and open source software for community-led information sharing. The system gathers, sorts, and displays real-time data directly from, and back to, people affected by various environmental changes. Designed as an inclusive and accessible tool, it has been continuously refined for nearly a decade by the frontline communities who rely on it.

Initiated in 2017, the software now supports over 350 million users across Asia, providing life-saving information during floods, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other extreme weather events. The software powers the award-winning disaster mapping platforms PetaBencana.id in Indonesia and MapaKalamidad.ph in the Philippines, providing hyperlocal intelligence that enables better decision making for residents, emergency managers and first responders.

Github

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 Siti OSS works to enable and expand disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery in Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond. Please share it widely.

Siti.Sense

Siti.Sense is a core component of our software, designed to facilitate real-time,
high-resolution disaster information sharing. It detects, verifies, and categorizes disaster severity levels as they unfold, based on crowdsourced reports from the public and official government data. The system provides a robust overview of rapidly changing events, ensuring that communities, first responders, and decision-makers receive timely, accurate, and actionable insights.

The AI-driven chatbot technology transforms social media into a real-time crisis coordination network: the system detects disaster-related posts on social media, automatically reaches out to affected individuals, and gathers information directly from people on-the-ground. By seamlessly integrating with social media, messaging platforms, and official data sources, Siti.Sense bridges information gaps and enables coordinated emergency response. Siti.Sense transforms scattered reports and social media posts into a reliable, real-time public information system, improving situational awareness; helping millions navigate climate risks, protect resources, and reduce losses .

Reports from users demonstrate how the humanitarian chatbot model for crowdsourcing disaster information via social media channels can successfully enable widespread participation while also ensuring accurate, reliable, and well-structured data that can be accessed and understood by all users without any extensive training process.

Siti.Sense powers:

Siti.Flow

Siti.Flow is designed to empower communities in resource sharing, coordination, and distribution during and after disasters.

Siti.Flow allows users to request, offer, and track resources such as food, water, and medical aid. By enabling bottom-up resource mobilization, Siti.Flow strengthens community resilience, turning grassroots coordination into a scalable and structured system that complements formal disaster response mechanisms.

Early pilot results: 70% faster aid delivery during February 2025 flooding in Sumatra.

Methodology

Since 2017, Siti OSS researchers have brought diverse expertise to the development of the software spanning architecture, systems engineering, statistics, anthropology, artistic research, design, geography, hydrography, hydraulic modeling, programming, and UX/UI development, among many other fields. Through an approach where social science and design research compliment and inform the technical development of the code itself, ensures that the software evolves in direct response to community needs.

By fostering continuous collaboration with the widest variety of stakeholders - including residents, experts, disaster managers, first responders, artists, activisits, community leaders - Siti OSS researchers have developed a co-creation process that drives every aspect of the platform, from humanitarian chatbots and web-based maps to disaster-specific tools. This commitment to inclusive, community-driven development has enabled the software to thrive and scale while maintaining a user-centered, grassroots-informed approach to disaster response technology.

Contributors

Siti OSS (formerly CogniCity) was initiated by Disaster Map Foundation [Yayasan Peta Bencana] in Indonesia in 2017. In 2019, Disaster Map Foundation signed a development partnership with CivicDataLab, who became co-maintainers of the code and continue to support PetaBencana.id in Indonesia, MapaKalamidad.ph in the Philippines, and additional urban experiments with the code in Asia and beyond.

At the helm of this collaboration are Nashin Mahtani (Director, Yayasan Peta Bencana) and Deepthi Chand (Founder, CivicDataLab), who have led the software’s growth from a city-scale research pilot to a regionally deployed, multi-hazard, multi-country infrastructure for community-led climate adaptation and disaster response. Since 2017, many researchers, developers, and communities have contributed and shaped the development of the work. All code contributions are documented on GitHub, and all partners are listed at info.petabencana.id. We’re proud of the many hands and minds that shape this work and we also like to keep things transparent!

History

Siti OSS builds on work developed at the Smart Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong (2013-2016) and the MIT Urban Risk Lab (2016-2017). In 2017, the then-MIT Deputy Executive Vice President Anthony P. Sharon formally and contractually handed over stewardship of the software (then CogniCity) to Yayasan Peta Bencana, ensuring the software’s future as a community-led, regionally governed tool. Since then, Yayasan Peta Bencana has continued to lead all core development, implementation, and international scaling of the software.

Under Yayasan Peta Bencana’s leadership, what began as a city-scale, single-hazard flood reporting tool has evolved into a multi-hazard, multi-country disaster information platform, integrated into the official workflows of national and local governments across Southeast Asia.

Under Yayasan Peta Bencana’s stewardship, the software:

Expanded to support forest fires, haze, cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other extreme events
Used by over 900 organizations to support first response
Expanded to support over 350 million people in risk reduction
Added robust features including multi-language support, automated alerts, government-issued notifications, and social media integration
Introduced new reporting channels such as Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, and web apps
Pioneered peer-to-peer resource sharing capabilities for mutual aid during emergencies
Supported data interoperability, analytics, and visualization tools for adaptive decision-making

Today, Siti OSS powers disaster mapping platforms in multiple countries, facilitates millions of user-generated reports, and reflects a decade of collaborative engineering, design, translation, and maintenance by communities across the region. Yayasan Peta Bencana has pioneered a localization strategy to support deployments cross diverse linguistic, cultural and governance contexts, and built an infrastructure for shared learning. We invite governments, researchers, civil society organizations, and community groups to adopt, adapt, and build with Siti OSS. Join us in growing an ecosystem of tools and practices rooted in solidarity, transparency, and regional adaptation.

The code has received support from USAID, Mapbox, Twitter, Pacific Disaster Center, Mercy Corps, re:arc institute, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network, Prudential, ISIF Asia, American Red Cross, and the Nature Conservatory, through their partnerships with Disaster Map Foundation (Yayasan Peta Bencana).

Maintained by:

Contact: info@petabencana.id