GIS Case Study
National Disaster Anticipation Platform — V5
The current release (V5) of a national anticipatory disaster-management platform, rebuilt around a dark operations theme and a global data catalogue.
Domain
Disaster Management / National Emergency Response
Role
Full-Stack GIS Developer
At A Glance
What Makes It Work
Global hazard coverage with a redesigned dark operations-room interface
Administrative boundary intelligence with full attribute inspection
Time-series legend and playback across near-real-time hazard rasters
Live feeds from USGS Earthquake API, GLOFAS, EUMETSAT, GDACS and Global Water Watch
Anticipation, not reaction
Most disaster-management tooling is built for response: something has happened, where is it, what do we send. This platform was commissioned for the earlier and harder question, what is likely to happen in the next days, where, and who is exposed, so that a national agency could act before an event rather than after it. That framing shaped everything. The system had to ingest global hazard feeds continuously, keep them current, and present them in a way a duty officer can read at three in the morning. V5 is the current release of a platform that has been rebuilt across several versions as the agency's needs and data sources expanded. The version history on this page records that evolution; what follows describes the system as it runs today.
A global catalogue on a control-room screen
The platform is built on Django and GeoDjango with a Vite front end and Mapbox GL JS, and V5 introduced two structural changes. The first is a global data catalogue: rather than a fixed set of national layers, the platform maintains a catalogue of hazard products with global and regional views switchable from one place. Live feeds are pulled on schedule from the USGS Earthquake API, GLOFAS for flood forecasting, EUMETSAT for satellite products, GDACS for global alerts and Global Water Watch, and storm-cell and precipitation layers refresh on a defined cadence. The second is the dark operations theme. The interface was redesigned for 24/7 control-room use: low luminance, high contrast on the hazard layers, and a time-aware legend that shares a single colour scale across a hazard raster's time series so an officer can play back the last 48 hours and read change without re-learning the legend. National and sub-national administrative boundaries carry full attribute inspection, so the question of which district a hazard footprint falls in is answered by clicking it.
What it changes for the agency
The practical effect is that the agency works from one screen showing what is coming rather than several browser tabs showing what has happened. Forecast products that previously required a specialist to download and interpret are on the map, on time, with the boundary intelligence needed to turn a hazard footprint into a list of affected districts. We have carried this platform through five releases, and the reason it has lasted is that each version was driven by what duty officers actually did with the previous one. The global catalogue in V5 exists because officers were asking about hazards outside the original national scope; the dark theme exists because the room it runs in is dark. That feedback loop is the part of long-running web application development that no amount of upfront specification replaces.
Capabilities
Core Functionality
Redesigned dark map theme tuned for 24/7 control-room use
National and sub-national boundary layers with attribute summaries
Time-aware legend with a colour scale shared across hazard layers
Global and regional views switchable from a single catalogue
Storm-cell and precipitation layers refreshed on a schedule
Layer thumbnail gallery for fast switching between data products
Search by place name or coordinates across the full extent
Technologies
Tools & Stack
Release History
Platform Evolution
National Disaster Anticipation Platform shipped across several major releases before reaching its current form — each one adding a distinct capability.
Cyclone & Severe Weather Release
Added tropical storm tracking and satellite cloud imagery to the platform.
Tropical cyclone track and forecast-cone visualisation
Satellite cloud imagery overlaid on the operations map
Wind-swath and intensity bands rendered as graduated colour surfaces
Event pop-ups with storm category, position and advisory detail
Meteorological Release
Introduced a full raster catalogue of climate and hydrological indicators.
Temperature, precipitation and soil-moisture rasters as styled surfaces
Rainfall accumulation products used for flood anticipation
Shared colour-ramp legend applied consistently across every product
Thumbnail catalogue letting operators switch products in one click
Global Integration Release
Wired the platform into international hazard feeds and event reporting.
Worldwide hazard coverage driven by a global alert feed
Flood-extent polygons published for affected administrative units
Earthquake shake-intensity rings from a live seismic API
Linked event summary pages with alert scoring and impact estimates
Foundational Release
Established the base map, layer catalogue and hazard overlays.
Satellite and terrain base mapping across the full national extent
Seismic fault lines, elevation and 3D terrain visualisation
Flood-extent and inundation overlays for affected river reaches
Population and exposure layers for impact assessment
Product
From The Working Application
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Which hazard data sources does the platform ingest?
Live feeds from the USGS Earthquake API, GLOFAS flood forecasts, EUMETSAT satellite products, GDACS global alerts and Global Water Watch, plus scheduled storm-cell and precipitation layers. The V5 global catalogue is designed so new sources are registered rather than hard-coded, and several have been added since the initial release.
Why is the interface dark?
It runs in a 24/7 operations room where screens are on continuously and ambient light is low. The V5 redesign uses a low-luminance base with high-contrast hazard layers so officers can read the map for long shifts without fatigue, and the time-series legend keeps a single colour scale across playback.
Can we see how a hazard has developed over time?
Yes. Near-real-time hazard rasters carry a time dimension with playback, and the legend colour scale is shared across the series so change is readable without reinterpreting the scale at each step. This is what turns a snapshot into an anticipation tool.
How does it identify affected areas?
National and sub-national administrative boundary layers carry full attribute inspection. Clicking anywhere in a hazard footprint returns the district, province and associated attributes, and boundaries can be used to filter and summarise hazard extent for briefings.
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