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Petajakarta 2.0 Ready to face the rainy season

December 18, 2015

Petajakarta 2.0 Ready to face the rainy season

Petajakarta 2.0 Ready to face the rainy season

UOW’s SMART Infrastructure Facility and Twitter have again partnered with Indonesian emergency services to encourage Jakarta citizens to report floods ahead of the coming rainy season.

PetaJakarta 2.0 will again feature the University's free and open source platform that turns geo-tagged Tweets into valuable real-time data that can be used by Indonesian citizens and government agencies to identify, navigate, and respond more quickly to seasonal flooding across Jakarta.

PetaJakarta.org is led by UOW co-principal investigators Dr Etienne Turpin and Dr Tomas Holderness, from the SMART Infrastructure Facility.

The web-based platform runs on custom built open source software, called CogniCity. Since the project’s official launch by Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama in December 2014, thousands of people have reported flood problems to PetaJakarta.org via their mobile devices. At peak times, PetaJakarta.org has handled more than 3,000 users per hour.

The system, was featured in a recent World Disasters Report. The report, commissioned by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, praised PetaJakarta.org as a case study of community-level response to disasters.

SMART Chief Operating Officer Tania Brown attended the Jakarta launch of PetaJakarta 2.0 and welcomed the ongoing collaboration.

“The key to this successful partnership is the willingness of our key collaborators Twitter and BPBD to share their knowledge and technology with us, which enable us to make a difference and improve the lives of the citizens of Jakarta.”

Upgrades to the platform will enable an enhanced user experience both for citizens when reporting viaTwitter (@petajkt) and at petajakarta.org.

Roy Simangunsong, Country Business Head Twitter Indonesia said the social platform arrived to the world as a real-time communication platform that has been proven to be useful in emergency situations.

“PetaJakarta is a result of a great collaborative effort between the government, private sector, and non-profit institution in using our platform as their part of public safety empowerment. Through this initiative, we hope to have well-prepared Jakarta citizens throughout this rainy season.”

The latest version includes new, critical features and enhancements, including reports from more sources, such as PasangMata (@PasangMata) and Qlue (@qluesmartcity); more interactive reports than enables users to engage with tweets via the PetaJakarata map feed.

More accurate status updates will be created when flood spots that appear on the map can be Retweeted by the Jakarta Emergency Management Agency (BPBD DKI Jakarta), signifying that the report has been verified. PetaJakarta 2.0 will also display real-time flood height and river gauges.

An internal dashboard has been developed for BPBD DKI Jakarta to help them monitor flood reports via the Twitter feed and verify them.

BPBD DKI Jakarta spokesperson Bambang Surya Putra said: “We are confident that we can respond to every real-time report that comes to us via the latest PetaJakarta.

“This will allow us to respond quickly as the flooding happens and help us save more lives. We encourage Jakarta citizens to keep on Tweeting the report during this rainy season, so that PetaJakarta can also grow as a life-saver for the government to empower public safety for Jakarta citizens.”

Background
The SMART Infrastructure Facility draws on the University of Wollongong’s proven research track record and the academic strength in the areas of engineering, commerce, informatics, law, and science to holistically assess infrastructure solutions.

PetaJakarta.org is a UOW Global Challenges Project that addresses the challenge of Sustaining Coastal and Marine Zones. The Global Challenges Program is a major research initiative designed to harness the expertise of world-class researchers to address complex, real-world problems – to transform lives and regions.