Handling the aftermath: Civica's 96-hour sprint
A behind-the-scenes look at how Civica went from field calls in Clarendon on Sunday night to a hardened, partner-ready platform by the morning of Wednesday, Nov 5, 2025. Images, loops, and callouts below show the decisions that shaped the launch.
Nov 2–5, 2025
96 hours door-to-deploy
14 parishes
Offline sync + jittered precision
5 partners
Design, ops, engineering, comms, legal
Clarendon shelter calls shaped the blueprint
Conversations from the Clarendon shelter the night Hurricane Melissa made landfall exposed the blind spots crews kept hitting—no shared map, no verification chain, and no way to conserve power while coordinating.
Instead of drafting features in a vacuum, we translated each frontline story into a single nervous system the community could trust. Every channel—voice, WhatsApp, SMS—had to land in one interface responders could read in seconds.
We treated tone as seriously as technology. The map, activity drawer, and post verification badges needed to keep households calm while giving responders firm signal on what to do next.
- Turned raw shelter reports into a mission charter anchored on transparent, trusted updates for residents and crews.
- Sketched the first dark-mode interaction model with battery-friendly contrast, large touch targets, and low-motion defaults.
- Outlined zero-trust verification counts so residents could see who confirmed each update before acting on it.
Visibility and trust had to ship together: the map, the status drawer, and the crews would all speak the same language.
Location jitter, scoped access, and redact-by-default rules kept sensitive households protected while still actionable.
A live map responders could rely on offline
By dawn on Nov 3 the live map, need bars, and verification ribbon were working end-to-end without an app store release. The focus was legibility, speed, and surviving spotty connectivity.
- Wired Esri World Imagery satellite tiles alongside density heat overlays so crews could read context beside real-time field notes.
- Cut service worker caches under 2 MB to guarantee tiles, fonts, and payloads stayed available through long outages.
- Dexie-backed local storage and versioned seed sync prevented duplicate submissions once devices finally reconnected.
- Keyword classifiers triaged new reports in under 400 ms on budget Android handsets, keeping the human review queue focused.
We profiled every map interaction on low-end Android hardware until the entire loop stayed sub-450 ms.
Workspaces, trust signals, and legal guardrails
With the map steady, we shifted to the collaboration plumbing: authentication gates, scoped roles, and export channels that would work for government desks and community crews alike.
- Launched organization workspaces with capability tags so logistics teams, NGOs, and government desks could filter by role instantly.
- Locked down domain, consent flow, and privacy statements covering data retention, jittering, and verification visibility.
- Instrumented pin analytics to monitor verification velocity and pause rollout the moment trust metrics dipped.
- Queued offline capture flows so caregivers could upload evidence whenever signal returned—no duplicate records allowed.
Every feature shipped with an audit trail entry, easing handoff to external partners and legal reviewers.
Stress, storytelling, and opening the doors
Nov 5, 2025 arrived with crews ready, devices tested, and the story published. Launch day balanced hardening the tech with making the mission legible to new partners.
Device sweeps across low-end Androids, laptops, and command posts locked in accessibility coverage and verified sync behaviour under surge loads.
Documentation shipped alongside the product: a quick-start deck for responders, printable job aids for shelters, and the public case study you are reading now.
Launch package bundled onboarding flows, partner invite templates, and data export specs for immediate adoption.
Partnership slots are reserved for imagery, logistics, and on-device AI triage rounds rolling out after November 2025.
96-hour operational log
Every day from Sunday night through launch morning carried a different pressure point. The notes below keep the run-book ready for future activations.
Hearing the gap firsthand
Sheltering in Clarendon during Hurricane Melissa, conversations with family on the front lines crystallized the coordination hole we had to fill.
- Listened as frontline relatives detailed how visibility and trust kept breaking down between crews and households.
- Reframed the shelter question into a mission statement we could execute against that same night.
- Sketched the battery-friendly dark interface that would conserve power for responders working without grid support.
Map heartbeat in place
Built the map experience by dawn so responders could see needs and resources without waiting on app stores.
- Built the live canvas with Esri World Imagery satellite tiles, density heatmaps, and optional post-event imagery.
- Cut service worker caches for tiles, fonts, and payloads under 2 MB for offline resilience.
- Hooked keyword classifiers into the need bars overlay to triage new reports in under 400 ms.
Operational scaffolding
Rounded out everything teams needed to collaborate without friction while the storm's impact kept unfolding.
- Implemented organization workspaces, authentication gates, and scoped roles for verified collaboration.
- Coordinated legal reviews documenting privacy practices, location jittering, and data sharing.
- Tuned edge-resilient sync queues so caregivers could capture evidence even when every call dropped.
Hardening, storytelling, launch
Stress-tested every flow, told the story, and opened the doors for partners to plug in.
- Ran device sweeps to validate accessibility coverage and stress-test sync under load.
- Authored launch content translating the vision into guidance for residents and responders.
- Framed the partnership roadmap inviting external organizations to extend Civica's reach.