🌧️ MonsoonRoute: Beyond the Shortest Route
Building evidence-aware navigation for a more resilient urban future.
Every monsoon, heavy rainfall transforms familiar city roads into unpredictable journeys. Waterlogging, traffic disruption, and changing road conditions make everyday commuting increasingly challenging.
Traditional navigation systems primarily optimize for distance and travel time. But during heavy rainfall, the fastest route may not be the most informed choice.
What if navigation could consider available waterlogging evidence before recommending a route?
That question inspired MonsoonRoute, our project for the WeMakeDevs Environmental Hacks — Heat & Water track.
🎯 The Problem: When the Shortest Route Isn't Enough
Urban waterlogging is more than an inconvenience. It creates uncertainty for commuters, disrupts mobility, and exposes limitations in conventional route planning.
Three challenges stand out:
- Limited road-level awareness: Rainfall forecasts do not directly reveal conditions on every street.
- Fragmented information: Weather data, terrain characteristics, and citizen observations are rarely presented together for route decisions.
- Unexplained recommendations: Commuters need to understand why an alternative route is suggested, not simply follow a highlighted line.
We wanted to explore a practical solution that prioritizes evidence, transparency, and informed decision-making.
💡 Introducing MonsoonRoute
MonsoonRoute is an evidence-aware, waterlogging-conscious route-planning system designed initially for passenger-car journeys in Central Delhi.
Instead of considering travel time alone, it is designed to evaluate available environmental and road-condition evidence when comparing possible routes.
The concept is straightforward:
Choose your journey → Compare route alternatives → Understand the evidence → Make an informed decision.
The system is intended to help users understand the trade-off between estimated travel duration and modeled waterlogging risk.
🚗 Core Features
1. Risk-Aware Route Comparison
Compare a conventional shortest-duration route with alternatives evaluated using available rainfall, terrain, and reviewed road-condition evidence.
2. Adjustable Detour Preferences
Choose an acceptable estimated travel-time detour between 0% and 30%, allowing route comparisons to reflect personal travel preferences.
3. Weather-Aware Planning
Explore current conditions alongside +1-hour and +3-hour planning horizons using available weather-model information.
4. Community-Powered Road Observations
Allow authenticated users to submit road-condition reports and supporting images. Reports are subject to human review before affecting public road decisions.
5. Explainable Route Recommendations
Present relative risk indicators, evidence coverage, source freshness, and understandable explanations rather than unexplained safety scores.
6. Responsible Handling of Uncertainty
When information is outdated or insufficient, the system is designed to communicate uncertainty instead of presenting unsupported conclusions.
⚙️ How MonsoonRoute Works
The proposed workflow combines environmental information, deterministic routing algorithms, cloud infrastructure, and human-reviewed reports.
Step 1 — Gather Environmental Evidence
Integrate information from:
- Open-Meteo: Rainfall and forecast information.
- Copernicus GLO-30: Terrain and elevation context.
- OpenStreetMap: Road-network information.
- Community Reports: Locally observed road conditions after review.
Step 2 — Evaluate Road Segments
The risk engine is designed to calculate a relative evidence-based risk index using available inputs and versioned scoring rules.
This index is not a measured probability of flooding or a guarantee of road safety.
Step 3 — Compare Feasible Routes
A deterministic routing engine evaluates alternatives against estimated travel time, configured detour limits, and reviewed road closures.
Step 4 — Explain the Recommendation
The interface is designed to show:
- Estimated journey duration and detour.
- Relative modeled-risk comparison.
- Supporting evidence and timestamps.
- Reviewed closures and important limitations.
- Human-readable explanations in English and Hindi.
The objective is not to replace the commuter's judgment, but to support it with better information.
☁️ Technology and AWS Architecture
MonsoonRoute is designed around an integrated web and cloud architecture.
Technology | Intended Role |
|---|
AWS Lambda | Weather ingestion and image-analysis processing |
Amazon S3 | Environmental archives and private model artifacts |
Amazon SQS | Asynchronous image-processing jobs |
Amazon CloudWatch | Monitoring and operational visibility |
Amazon EventBridge Scheduler | Scheduled environmental data updates |
Supabase | Authentication, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and private report storage |
Next.js + TypeScript | Responsive web application and APIs |
OpenStreetMap + MapLibre | Road-network visualization |
**ON |
|
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