Before the Map: What It Truly Takes to Audit Urban Infrastructure
On January 10th at 10:30 AM, a diverse group of citizens and urban professionals gathered to conduct a guided audit of one of Bengaluru’s Storm Water Drains (SWDs). The data they collected now feeds into a publicly accessible dashboard dedicated to the city’s stormwater infrastructure.
As the first entries began appearing on the map, we were reminded of something important: while the public will eventually see a “finished” dashboard, the real story began months before anyone stepped into the field.
Designing for Participation, Not Just Data
This project began with a demanding question: How can citizens audit urban infrastructure accurately and meaningfully?
At Mod Foundation, we are a multidisciplinary team — architects, urban designers, engineers, researchers, and communicators. Every component of this initiative has been developed in-house: the audit workflow, the questionnaire, the guidebook, the campaign, the website, and the dashboard framework.
When people ask who built the website or who designed the app, the answer is simple — we did. But before inviting citizens to audit the city, we rigorously audited ourselves.
The audit framework was debated, refined, and repeatedly tested. The questions span physical condition, maintenance, encroachments, accessibility, and water quality. Designing the form, however, was only half the task. The real challenge was ensuring that it would work under real urban conditions — in heat, traffic, uneven terrain, and unpredictable environments.
Testing the City Before Inviting the City
Between July and August 2025, our team conducted multiple rounds of test audits across C100, Sarakki, and Magrath Road. These were not symbolic exercises. They were reality checks. How long does an audit actually take? Does GPS fail in dense neighbourhoods? Are instructions clear when standing beside an open drain? Each field visit revealed adjustments that needed to be made. The workflow evolved through experience.
Transparency and accessibility were foundational principles. Team members attended technical webinars early in the process to ensure that we adopted open-source tools and publicly accessible data formats (Credits: Ujaval Gandhi). Civic technology must remain civic. The dashboard is not a proprietary system; it is a public instrument.
By December 2025, the initiative took visible form. The campaign theme, visual identity, mascot, website, and dashboard interface were all conceptualised and developed in-house. We also produced a short film documenting the journey — because the story behind the data matters as much as the data itself.
Audit Guidebook: https://buildingaresilientbengaluru.com/2026/01/09/guide-to-conducting-a-citizen-audit/
Building Human Infrastructure
On January 9th, in collaboration with Oorvani Foundation, we conducted a Masterclass introducing participants to the anatomy of storm water drains, governance structures, maintenance challenges, and the audit methodology. This was followed by a hands-on tutorial.
Training precedes trust. Confidence precedes data.
The audit on January 10th was therefore not just about collecting information. It was about building what we think of as “human infrastructure.” While data science often prioritizes clean datasets, our focus is on informed collaboration between urban professionals and citizens.
Architects, engineers, designers, and residents each bring different forms of expertise. It takes this collective intelligence to make civic technology meaningful.
Beyond the Dashboard
Three more guided citizen audits are planned. Participants who attend these sessions are now equipped to conduct independent audits in their own neighbourhoods. This is how observability scales — not through technology alone, but through shared capacity.
At Mod Foundation, our mission is to make cities observable. The storm water drain audit is one step in that direction. The dashboard and maps are visible outputs. But the deeper outcome lies in citizens who begin to look more closely at the infrastructure that quietly sustains their city. Before the map, there is method. Before the dashboard, there is discipline. Before the data, there is a village.
In the coming weeks, this series will also share what usually remains unseen — the behind-the-scenes work of putting this campaign together. The debates over wording, the field setbacks, the technical glitches, the small breakthroughs. It will bring forward the teamwork that shaped the initiative, and personal accounts from those who tested, questioned, and refined the process.
Because civic infrastructure is not only built in drains and dashboards — it is built in collaboration.
By Sonia Das ( Date of submission: 09.01.2026) | Edited by Nidhi Bhatnagar
