How AI and Open-Source GIS Tools Are Reshaping Disaster Response in Indonesia

Indonesia, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, faces frequent natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis, and wildfires, most recently along the coast of East Nusa Tenggara and in Kalimantan. Despite multiple government agencies maintaining their own geographic information systems, these platforms remain siloed and fail to interoperate effectively during emergencies, slowing relief efforts. The fragmented data landscape contrasts sharply with European civil protection models, where unified geospatial layers feed into real-time common operating pictures used by multi-agency teams. A growing wave of independent developers, aided by AI coding tools, is now building open-source platforms such as Mandum Rimba and RuangKita to consolidate satellite, seismic, and weather data into accessible public maps. Experts argue that AI-driven data harmonization and cloud-native GIS architectures could significantly close the gap between available spatial data and on-the-ground disaster response.