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OrbitORBIT — smart city operations platform concept
Independent Concept Case Study

One intelligent view
of the city.

ORBIT is a smart-city operations platform concept that unifies traffic, water, power, environment, and field response into a single command surface — so operators can see, rank, and resolve city events from one place.

Explore the prototypeRead the case study
Fictional city: Meridian Bay Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind
orbit.city / operations / overview

City Operations Overview

Meridian Bay · 7 districts · 09:41 local

MA

Median Response Time

6.4min

18.2%vs. previous 7 days

Active Incidents

12

43 critical, 4 high

Deployed Field Units

38/ 46

6.5%82% fleet utilisation

Network Availability

99.2%

0.4%4 sensors degraded

City Operations Map

7 districts · live feed

Signal cluster outage

INC-4819 · Civic Core

P1P2P3P4

Active Incidents

12 open · sorted by priority

3 Critical
  • INC-4821P1

    Water main rupture beneath junction

    Harbour West · Water Network · Unit 07 · opened 08:12

    62%
  • INC-4819P1

    Signal cluster outage — 6 intersections

    Civic Core · Traffic Systems · Unit 12 · opened 08:31

    45%
  • INC-4816P2

    Substation thermal threshold exceeded

    North Ridge · Power Grid · Unit 03 · opened 09:04

    78%
  • INC-4811P2

    Air quality spike near industrial belt

    East Docks · Environment · Unit 21 · opened 09:22

    30%
  • INC-4807P3

    Streetlight corridor failure, 1.2 km

    Lakeside · Lighting · Unit 09 · opened 10:05

    55%
  • INC-4802P4

    Waste collection route blocked

    Old Quarter · Sanitation · Unit 15 · opened 10:41

    88%
7
City districts
1.9K
Connected sensors
46
Field units
24/7
Operations window
Case Study

Cities generate more signals than any single team can see.

ORBIT is a self-initiated design and prototyping exercise. It explores what a unified municipal operations layer could look like if every department worked from the same live picture. There is no real client, contract, or deployment behind it.

Independent Concept Case Study. ORBIT is fictional. All cities, incidents, teams, metrics, and outcomes shown are invented for demonstration. No government, agency, or company data is represented, and no third-party brands are used.

Type
Independent concept case study
Role
Product strategy · UX/UI · Frontend
Timeline
Self-directed, 2026
Status
Prototype — not a shipped product
The Challenge

Fragmented city systems

In most mid-size cities, each utility and service runs its own monitoring stack. When something breaks, the delay is rarely technical — it is the time spent working out who owns the problem.

  • Siloed alerting

    Traffic, water, power, and sanitation each run separate tools, so nothing is ranked against anything else.

  • Manual hand-offs

    Coordination happens over calls and spreadsheets, which is where minutes and context get lost.

  • No shared truth

    Every department reports different numbers, so leadership cannot compare or prioritise with confidence.

The Concept

A unified operations layer

ORBIT sits above existing departmental systems rather than replacing them. It normalises every signal into one ranked queue, one map, and one shared record of what happened.

  • One operational surface

    Every signal in the city normalised into a single, ranked, live queue.

  • Spatial context first

    Incidents, crews, and assets rendered on one map so proximity drives decisions.

  • Assistive intelligence

    Correlation and forecasting surface as suggestions an operator confirms — never silent automation.

My role

End to end — from problem framing through to the working prototype you are scrolling through.

01

Product Strategy

Framed the problem, defined the operating model, and set the scope of the concept.

02

UX / UI Design

Information architecture, incident workflow, dashboard layout, and the full visual language.

03

Frontend Prototype

Built this responsive, component-driven prototype in Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS.

Product Prototype

The command centre

A dark, high-density operations console designed for long shifts in low-light rooms. Every panel below is a live React component driven by local mock data — pan the map pins, switch layers, hover the charts.

orbit.city / operations / overview

City Operations Overview

Meridian Bay · 7 districts · 09:41 local

MA

Median Response Time

6.4min

18.2%vs. previous 7 days

Active Incidents

12

43 critical, 4 high

Deployed Field Units

38/ 46

6.5%82% fleet utilisation

Network Availability

99.2%

0.4%4 sensors degraded

City Operations Map

7 districts · live feed

Signal cluster outage

INC-4819 · Civic Core

P1P2P3P4

Active Incidents

12 open · sorted by priority

3 Critical
  • INC-4821P1

    Water main rupture beneath junction

    Harbour West · Water Network · Unit 07 · opened 08:12

    62%
  • INC-4819P1

    Signal cluster outage — 6 intersections

    Civic Core · Traffic Systems · Unit 12 · opened 08:31

    45%
  • INC-4816P2

    Substation thermal threshold exceeded

    North Ridge · Power Grid · Unit 03 · opened 09:04

    78%
  • INC-4811P2

    Air quality spike near industrial belt

    East Docks · Environment · Unit 21 · opened 09:22

    30%
  • INC-4807P3

    Streetlight corridor failure, 1.2 km

    Lakeside · Lighting · Unit 09 · opened 10:05

    55%
  • INC-4802P4

    Waste collection route blocked

    Old Quarter · Sanitation · Unit 15 · opened 10:41

    88%

Response Time vs. Incident Volume

Rolling 24 hours

ResponseVolume

Incident Mix

By category, last 30 days

Field Team Status

38 of 46 units deployed

82% utilised
  • U07

    N. Haddad

    Unit 07 · Water · Harbour West

    On site

    On site

  • U12

    R. Okafor

    Unit 12 · Traffic · Civic Core

    En route

    4 min

  • U03

    L. Moreau

    Unit 03 · Power · North Ridge

    On site

    On site

  • U21

    S. Tanaka

    Unit 21 · Environment · East Docks

    En route

    11 min

  • U09

    A. Farouk

    Unit 09 · Lighting · Lakeside

    Available

    Standby

  • U15

    D. Kovač

    Unit 15 · Sanitation · Old Quarter

    Available

    Standby

Departmental Workload

Open vs. resolved this week

ORBIT Intelligence

Suggestions require operator confirmation

3 new
  • Correlation91% confidence

    Two incidents share one root cause

    INC-4821 and INC-4819 sit on the same substation feed. Treating them as a single event could remove one duplicate dispatch.

    ApplyDismiss
  • Forecast78% confidence

    Harbour West pressure risk rising

    Sector H-4 is trending toward the failure threshold within 6 hours at the current draw rate.

    ApplyDismiss
  • Resourcing84% confidence

    Rebalance suggestion

    Unit 09 is idle 1.8 km from the East Docks queue. Reassignment would cut projected arrival by roughly 7 minutes.

    ApplyDismiss

Infrastructure Health

5 systems monitored

1 degraded

  • Power Grid

    99.4%

    412 nodes · 1 substation on watch

  • Water Network

    94.1%

    268 sensors · Pressure loss, sector H-4

  • Traffic Systems

    97.8%

    1,140 signals · 6 signals in fallback

  • Environment

    99.9%

    96 stations · All stations reporting

  • Emergency Comms

    100%

    24 relays · Redundancy verified

Density with hierarchy

Operators need volume on screen. Type scale, weight, and one restrained accent do the ranking instead of colour noise.

Map as the anchor

Spatial context sits at the centre of the layout because proximity is the first question in almost every dispatch.

Assistive, never silent

Intelligence appears as reviewable suggestions with confidence, always paired with an explicit apply or dismiss.

Incident Workflow

From raw signal to closed record

One incident, six states. The same structure applies whether the event is a burst water main or a blocked collection route — which is what makes cross-department comparison possible.

Step 01

New Incident

Signal arrives from a sensor, a field report, or a resident channel and lands in one queue.

INC-4821P1 Critical
  • Source: pressure sensor H-4
  • Auto-timestamped 08:12
  • Duplicate check passed
Workflow progress17%
Field Companion

The same incident, in the crew's hand

The mobile view strips the console down to what matters at the kerbside: what the job is, where it is, how urgent it is, and proof that it is done.

09:41
Assigned TaskU07
INC-4821P1 Critical

Water main rupture — isolate and repair

08:12 — 11:53

Harbour West · Junction 14, Pier Road

2.1 km away · ETA 6 min

Navigate

Evidence

2 captures
Before08:24
After11:47

Checklist

3/4
01

One task in focus

Crews see the single active job, not a queue. Everything else is one tap away.

02

Evidence is mandatory

Before and after captures attach to the incident record and feed the closure report automatically.

03

Offline-tolerant by design

Actions queue locally and sync when the signal returns — assumed behaviour for underground and dockside work.

Loop closed

When the crew taps complete, the incident moves to closure in the console, the map pin clears, and the structured report is generated from the timeline and evidence already captured — no second data entry.

Design System

A restrained system built for signal, not decoration

Colour is reserved almost entirely for status. Everything else earns hierarchy through spacing, weight, and typography — so a critical alert is never competing with a decorative gradient.

Colour

8 tokens

Base

#05070C

Canvas

Surface

#0B0F1A

Panels

Elevated

#141A29

Rows, inputs

Accent

#3B82F6

Primary action

Signal

#22D3EE

Data highlight

Critical

#F43F5E

P1 severity

High

#FB923C

P2 severity

Nominal

#34D399

Healthy state

Typography

Inter · JetBrains Mono
  • Display42–68px · Semibold · -2% tracking

    One intelligent view

  • Section28–32px · Semibold

    City operations overview

  • Panel title13px · Semibold · wide

    Active incidents

  • Body15px · Regular · 1.6 line height

    Sector H-4 pressure trending toward threshold.

  • DataMono · tabular numerals

    6.4 min · 99.2% · INC-4821

Status indicators

4 priority levels
P1 criticalP2 highP3 mediumP4 low
  • P1 CriticalLife safety or city-wide service loss
  • P2 HighDistrict-level disruption
  • P3 MediumLocalised, contained impact
  • P4 LowScheduled or low-urgency work
NominalWatchDegradedScheduled

Buttons

4 variants · 2 sizes
Dispatch unit New incidentEscalate to P1Cancel
ApplyDismissResolve

Cards

Panel · metric · alert

Water pressure

3.8bar

P1 critical

Sector H-4 below threshold

Pressure has fallen for 6 consecutive readings. Unit 07 already on site.

Data visualisation

Recharts

Time series · area

Comparison · grouped bar

Projected Outcomes

What this concept is designed to achieve

ORBIT has not been deployed, so there are no measured results to report. The following are the intended design outcomes — the effects the interface and workflow are built to produce, stated as hypotheses to be tested.

Projected concept outcomes. Not benchmarks, pilot results, or client metrics. No performance claim here has been measured in a live environment.

Faster

Operational awareness

A single ranked queue is designed to shorten the gap between a signal appearing and an operator acting on it.

  • One intake path for all sources
  • Priority scored on shared criteria
  • Live map replaces status calls

Clearer

Cross-department coordination

Shared taxonomy and visible ownership are intended to remove the ambiguity that slows multi-team events.

  • Explicit owner on every incident
  • Capacity visible before dispatch
  • Hand-offs recorded, not verbal

One

Source of operational truth

Structured closure reports build a consistent record that leadership and field crews both read from.

  • Uniform closure structure
  • Evidence attached to every task
  • Comparable numbers across depts

Where I would take it next

The honest limitation of a self-directed concept is the absence of real operators. That is the first gap I would close.

  • 01Validate the priority model with real municipal operators
  • 02Usability-test the dispatch flow under time pressure
  • 03Define integration contracts for legacy SCADA and GIS systems
  • 04Extend the concept to planned works and seasonal load