Indonesia: How tweeting about floods became a civic duty in Jakarta

Monsoon floods hit the Indonesian capital in 2015, sparking 100,000 Twitter conversations. The Guardian reports how those tweets were used in the rescue operation. PetaJakarta.org (Map Jakarta) was born, its is an online platform that transforms Twitter into an emergency data gathering and critical alert service during flooding in Jakarta.

Last February, by asking residents to confirm the flood situation where they were, PetaJakarta.org was able to map 1,000 flooding sites across the city in real-time. The resulting flood map was used by the general public and emergency services alike and was viewed more than 160,000 times.