Justin Auciello
I build and operate civic signal systems: two-way information networks that turn distributed observation into shared understanding.My foundation is planning. For more than 20 years, I have worked as a New Jersey licensed planner in land use, redevelopment, complex litigation analysis, expert testimony, and municipal governance. In that work, I convert complex land use problems into defensible planning positions that clients, attorneys, boards, agencies, and courts can rely on.For the past 15 years, I have also built, operated, and studied civic information environments directly. In 2011, I founded Jersey Shore Hurricane News, a community-powered information network that grew into one of New Jersey’s largest trusted civic information platforms. In everyday civic life and crisis, including Superstorm Sandy and many events since, JSHN has helped communities navigate uncertainty, share local conditions, and make decisions through verified public information.That work led to seven years of WHYY reporting on coastal resilience, climate risk, recovery, infrastructure, and public policy; recognition as a White House Champion of Change; and three years of humanitarian information work in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. There, I designed and field-led Información Como Ayuda, a two-way system launched in a degraded communications environment that reached more than one million people.I later served as Global Information Ecosystems Advisor at Internews, supporting assessments and programmatic responses across Latin America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.Across this arc, I have worked at the intersection of planning systems and information systems: the hearing room and the comment thread, the master plan and the rumor cycle, the redevelopment ordinance and the community information gap, the expert report and the public narrative.In each setting, the work is similar: assemble facts, detect patterns, test claims, build trust, and produce positions that can withstand scrutiny.The through-line is simple: information is infrastructure. Trust is architecture. Tone is engineering.My work is designing those systems so people can understand what is happening, act together, and make better decisions under uncertainty.