About Island Watch
Island Watch is a regional awareness dashboard for Vancouver Island. It brings source-linked public-impact updates into one place so people can quickly understand what could affect travel, power, transit, ferries, wildfire awareness, weather, and daily movement across the Island.
It is not an emergency service and it does not replace official sources. It is a faster way to see the regional picture, then follow through to the original source when an update affects a decision.
- Regional focus
- Vancouver Island
- Primary use
- Public-impact awareness
- Data model
- Source-linked public feeds
- Account required
- No
- Built for
- Residents, travellers, operators, and communities
What Island Watch does
Island Watch is built around a practical idea: people should not need to check several separate sites to understand what might affect their day.
Road conditions, ferry capacity, power outages, transit alerts, weather risks, and wildfire context matter more when seen together. Island Watch normalizes those updates into a single regional status surface: what is happening, where it is, how serious it appears to be, and where the information came from.
Scan quickly
Map, list, category filters, and regional views are built for fast situational awareness.
Understand impact
Items are grouped by practical attention: act now, plan around, or watch.
Check the source
Updates keep source names, source times, confidence, and links visible.
What Island Watch tracks
Roads
Closures, incidents, construction impacts, and route disruptions that could affect movement across the Island.
Ferries
Route status, capacity pressure, delays, cancellations, and other ferry-related changes where the source data is available.
Power
Current outage information from BC Hydro, including affected areas and restoration details where provided.
Transit
Regional service alerts from BC Transit systems that may affect local movement.
Weather
Environment Canada alerts that may affect travel, visibility, safety, or regional planning.
Wildfire
Current BC Wildfire Service location and perimeter data, shown as public-impact context rather than emergency instruction.
Data sources
Island Watch uses public and official-source information where available. The current production ingest runs through Supabase Edge Functions on scheduled intervals and stores normalized alerts with source health, freshness, and source links.
Some information may be delayed, incomplete, unavailable, or changed at the source. When an update affects a decision, use the original source link for confirmation.
What Island Watch is not
Designed for awareness
The dashboard helps people notice regional disruptions and understand source context. During emergencies, follow official emergency instructions, local government notices, emergency services, and original source updates.
Not a final authority
- - Emergency dispatch or emergency instructions
- - Guaranteed real-time completeness
- - Medical, legal, or personal safety advice
- - A replacement for official alerts, local authorities, or emergency broadcasts
- - Primary law-enforcement monitoring
Privacy and independence
Privacy
Island Watch does not require an account to view regional status information. The app includes basic production analytics through Vercel Analytics and has an optional issue-report form. Issue reports may include the selected alert, issue type, comment, optional contact information, and browser user agent.
Independent project
Island Watch is designed and developed independently by Jeromy Mobley. It is not affiliated with BC Ferries, BC Hydro, BC Transit, DriveBC, Environment Canada, BC Wildfire Service, emergency services, local governments, or police agencies unless explicitly stated. Source names identify where public information came from.
Core application: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Leaflet, Supabase storage and scheduled Edge Function ingestion, hosted with Vercel and Supabase.