CivicSense: A Real-Time Civic Issue Reporting and Resolution Platform for Indian Municipal Wards

Rapid urbanisation in India has placed unprecedented pressure on civic infrastructure. Traditional complaint mechanisms — phone hotlines, in-person ward visits, and paper forms — are slow, opaque, and fail to scale with urban growth. CivicSense is a fullstack Progressive Web Application (PWA) and Android mobile application that bridges the communication gap between citizens and municipal authorities. The platform enables citizens to report civic issues — including potholes, garbage overflow, drainage blockages, water leakage, streetlight damage, electric cable hazards, and road accidents — through a streamlined four-step workflow: location capture, photo evidence, issue categorisation, and submission review. The system incorporates intelligent duplicate detection using the Haversine geodesic distance formula, automatically routing new reports as upvotes when an identical issue exists within a 50-metre radius. A vote-aggregation mechanism escalates issue severity to 'severe' when the report count reaches five. The backend is powered by Google Firebase Firestore for real-time data synchronisation and Firebase Authentication for secure role-based access across three roles — citizen, authority, and admin. Performance evaluation demonstrates an issue submission time of 6.2 s, Firestore real-time latency of 180 ms, and a Lighthouse PWA score of 100.

Keywords: Civic Issue Reporting, Progressive Web Application, Firebase Firestore, Duplicate Detection, Haversine Formula, Municipal Management, Role-Based Access Control, Android, Capacitor.

Jayasurya S, Abdulkalam N, Abishakeanand M, Vaishak M, M. Prakash (2026). CivicSense: A Real-Time Civic Issue Reporting and Resolution Platform for Indian Municipal Wards. International Journal of Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Education & Technology (IJIRMET), 11(3).