When a map becomes a mirror

In a remote Alpine town in Victoria called Dargo — population 105 — we’ve been piloting something deceptively simple: a map.

At Humanitech, we don’t just test whether a tech solution works — we explore how it’s built, who it’s built with and whether it earns trust where it matters most. This pilot was no exception.

From the outset, the goal wasn’t to drop in a ready-made platform. It was to shape something useful and usable — with the community, not just for them. Along the way, the pilot raised deeper questions that sit at the heart of our work:

• Can a map reflect what really matters to a community — not just what’s on a risk model?
• Can technology support people through crises without ignoring what they already know and do?
• And can a tool that starts as an outside idea become something a community truly calls its own?

Here’s what we learnt.

A pilot built from the ground up

The Dargo pilot emerged through the QBE AcceliCITY Humanitarian Challenge — a partnership between Australian Red Cross, QBE Foundation and Leading Cities, and was made possible with funding support from The Coca-Cola Foundation.

WEO, a satellite and AI mapping company, won the 2024 Challenge with a hyperlocal platform combining satellite data, AI and local insights to help communities understand and adapt to climate risks.

Dargo was chosen as the pilot site not just because of its repeat exposure to fires, floods and storms — but because of the way the community had already shown up for each other. Through the RediCommunities program, locals had been leading their own recovery — mapping risks, strengthening connections and planning for what might come next. Their practicality, proactivity and openness meant when the idea of trialling a new climate tech tool was raised, they didn’t just say yes — they leaned in, ready to shape it to fit their place.

This pilot wasn’t about rolling out a platform. It was about reshaping it, together.

What mattered most to the community

The pilot began not with tech, but with the real-world challenges communities like Dargo face.

Questions emerged through conversations and workshops, centred on connection, preparedness and care:

• How can community prepare for extended periods of isolation (+2 weeks)?
• What backup drinking water options are available when river water is unsafe?
• What role does community play in the first response when emergency services are delayed?
• What insights or information would have been useful during the last emergency situation?

Over 45 members of the Dargo community joined co-design workshops throughout the pilot, and around 80 community members in total have been involved across events and engagements linked to the project. They shared local priorities — roads that flood early, areas where visitors congregate, communications black spots and key assets like community-owned generators or Wi-Fi spots.

Bringing together different perspectives revealed where the platform needed to evolve. Some of the original design elements — like the language, risk categories or interface — didn’t quite align with how locals navigated and made decisions.

The pilot team saw these moments as opportunities to strengthen the tool — together. WEO listened and adapted. Categories were simplified. Labels changed. The platform’s navigation was redesigned to make it more intuitive. New layers were added — not just fire and flood maps, but assembly points, healthcare locations and socially important landmarks.

The result was a tool shaped by the community — one that felt practical, grounded and locally relevant.

More than a platform: building capability and confidence

The pilot didn’t just deliver a better map. It built something harder to quantify: confidence.

Residents saw that their knowledge mattered. They saw the platform shift in response to their feedback. That created a sense of ownership — reinforced by training local community champions who now act as trusted go-to’s for the platform.

This was co-design at its best: not a one-off workshop, but an ongoing process that ceded control, embedded trust and built local capability.

In fact, one of the biggest surprises was how fast the community moved. While the tech team expected co-design to slow things down, it was often the development timeline that had to catch up to the clarity and momentum coming from locals.

When tech becomes infrastructure

Today, the Dargo community use the platform to:

• Understand the fire, flood and heat risk on locations of value
• Familiarise themselves with the locations of assembly areas, food, fuel supplies, accommodation, WiFi stands or medical resources
• Familiarise themselves with manual interventions that the community can take, either at a community level or on an individual basis to mitigate those risks
• Orient new volunteers or visitors
• Prepare for bushfire season
• Support funding applications with data-backed local risks

The tool has become part of the town’s planning fabric. It’s used in community meetings and disaster preparedness sessions. And because it reflects what matters locally, it’s trusted.

That’s not to say the work is done. Some requests — like real-time road closures, tracking aggregated people movements or anticipating mobile blackspots and network congestion during emergencies — aren’t technically feasible (yet). But the platform has created a structure where feedback can continue, and where the tech can keep evolving alongside the community.

What made it work

A few ingredients were critical:

• Start with people, not tech: The pilot didn’t begin with a feature list — it began with lived experience, so the solution reflected what matters day to day and not just what looks good on paper.
• Design with, not for: Community members influenced not only the platform’s content, but also its layout, language and logic — recognising that if people can’t find or understand what they need, it doesn’t matter how good the data is.
• Invest in local roles: A trusted Australian Red Cross team member embedded in the community (and a local himself) helped bridge gaps between community, tech and institution — creating continuity that supported trust, momentum and follow-through.
• Make the system adapt: Legal, procurement and delivery processes were flexible enough to allow for real co-design and collaboration, meaning good ideas from the community didn’t get stuck in red tape.

And above all: follow through. The community saw that what they said mattered — not just in theory, but in what actually got built.

Scaling trust, not just tech

The Dargo platform is still in use — and still evolving. The community continues to feed in ideas, test new layers, and explore improvements like offline functionality for when communications infrastructure is down.

As we consider how this model could support other communities, we’re moving carefully. Scaling doesn’t mean replicating the tool as-is. It means holding onto what made it work — deep engagement, shared ownership and enough flexibility to meet communities where they are.

This pilot also challenged how we think about responsible innovation. It reminded us that building ethical tools isn’t enough. We also need to build the conditions that make ethical tools possible — shared language, flexible governance, and the time to get it right.

What happened in Dargo isn’t just a local success story. It’s a practical demonstration of how community knowledge and climate technology can work together — not in competition, but in collaboration.

If you’re developing technology for resilience, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Start with lived experience: Ground your solution in real-world insights, not assumptions.
• Adapt the system, not just the software: Ensure your governance, processes and partnerships allow space for true co-design.
• Be willing to let go: The best solutions emerge when communities lead — and when developers are open to being changed by the process.

And make sure that when you hand over the keys, that community has been driving all along.