Case Study: Foreign & Commonwealth Office achieves scalable, offline-capable crisis response with Civica's Crisis Hub

Building a Truly Mission Critical solution for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) needed to transform its rudimentary Crisis Hub — the system used by consular teams to identify, locate and support “affected persons” (APs) during overseas crises — into a technically robust, rapidly scalable and fully dependable solution. Civica was engaged initially to improve mapping capability and was then asked to take on a wider programme to deliver a secure, multichannel, remotely available system with offline working and better information for critical decision-making.

Civica rebuilt the Crisis Hub using OpenStreetMap-based mapping, a browser‑snapshot offline encryption/synchronisation approach, cloud scalability, automated triage and de‑duplication, and enhanced real‑time reporting (including pivot-style analysis). The result is a resilient, user‑friendly platform supporting over 2,000 FCO and partner users, proven in events such as the Nepal earthquake and Tunisian attacks, delivering faster, more accurate decisions, rapid scaling in crises and cost‑efficient, maintainable operations — outcomes driven and delivered by Civica.

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Simon Wood

Head of Crisis Management Department