Built by a 17-year-old developer in Istanbul, the open-source app is designed to keep nearby people communicating when internet and cellular service become unavailable.
By Emirhan Duman
A smartphone can remain fully functional after a disaster while losing the one thing that makes most of its communication tools useful: a working network. Crisis Connect was built around that gap. The open-source emergency communication platform is designed to give people a fallback option when cellular service and internet access are unavailable, overloaded or unreliable.
Crisis Connect is available on Android and iOS and has surpassed 10,000 downloads on Google Play. When a conventional network is available, the platform can use internet-based communication. When it is not, supported nearby devices can communicate directly over Bluetooth instead of depending on a cell tower, mobile data connection or active SIM card.
That offline-first approach is meant for situations such as earthquakes, floods, wildfires, widespread power outages and other emergencies in which communication infrastructure can be damaged or overwhelmed. Rather than assuming one network will remain available throughout a crisis, Crisis Connect is being developed around the idea that emergency communication should have multiple layers.
The app goes beyond a basic offline messenger. Crisis Connect combines messaging with SOS functions, location sharing, emergency guidance and a growing collection of disaster-oriented tools. It also includes features intended to support two-way communication between affected people and field teams in supported nearby-device scenarios.
Importantly, Crisis Connect is not intended to replace emergency hotlines, professional radio systems, satellite communications or official public-safety infrastructure. It is designed as an additional layer: something that may remain useful when primary systems are unavailable or under severe strain.
The project also includes Crisis Connect Hub, an AI-supported disaster and crisis management platform being developed for emergency operations centers, public institutions and organizations involved in disaster coordination. The longer-term goal is to connect citizen-facing communication, field information and institutional decision support within the same broader emergency communication ecosystem.
Crisis Connect is developed openly on GitHub. That matters in emergency technology, where reliability, trust and the ability for outside developers and researchers to inspect a system can be especially important. The project’s source code is publicly available for technical review and community contribution.
The project was created by Emirhan Duman, a 17-year-old high school student and software developer in Istanbul, Türkiye. It began with a straightforward question: if the phones in people’s pockets still work after a disaster, why should they become unable to communicate solely because the infrastructure connecting them has failed?
That question has grown into a live Android and iOS project that continues to evolve across offline communication, emergency tools, rescue-oriented workflows and institutional coordination. The broader offline-first concept has also been discussed on PreventionWeb, the knowledge platform of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
For Crisis Connect, the goal is not to promise a perfect network where none exists. It is to make the devices people already carry more useful when conventional connectivity becomes the weak link.
“Disasters should not make a working phone useless just because the network is gone.”
— Emirhan Duman, Founder & Lead Developer, Crisis Connect
Official Links
Website: https://crisisconnect.network
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.auralis.crisisconnect
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crisis-connect-offline-chat/id6759731195
GitHub: https://github.com/emirhan-duman/Crisis-Connect
PreventionWeb article: https://www.preventionweb.net/drr-community-voices/why-disaster-risk-management-needs-offline-first-communication-layer