Justin Auciello

I design and operate civic signal systems: two-way information networks that help communities and institutions turn distributed observation into shared understanding during both everyday civic life and crisis.For more than 20 years, I have worked as a New Jersey licensed planner, and for the past 15 years I have built, operated, and studied public information systems where trust, verification, and timing are mission-critical.In 2011, I founded Jersey Shore Hurricane News (JSHN), a pioneering community-powered information network that grew into one of New Jersey’s largest trusted civic information platforms. During Superstorm Sandy, JSHN helped support situational awareness and public communication when traditional systems were strained. Since then, it has helped communities navigate hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, the pandemic, and long recoveries, while also providing trusted service journalism during calmer periods.That work led to seven years of reporting for WHYY, recognition as a White House Champion of Change, and later humanitarian information work in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. There, after enduring the catastrophic storm and immediate aftermath, I designed and field-led “Información como Ayuda,” a two-way humanitarian information system that reached more than one million people and connected communities, aid organizations, and public institutions under severely degraded conditions.I later served as Global Information Ecosystems Advisor at Internews, supporting information ecosystem assessments and translating findings into programmatic responses across Latin America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.Alongside this work, I have maintained an active planning practice focused on land use, redevelopment, housing, infrastructure, resilience, and public process.Working simultaneously across planning, journalism, emergency communication, and humanitarian response led me to a central conclusion:Information is infrastructure. Trust is architecture. Tone is engineering.Today, I help communities, institutions, news organizations, and public-serving systems better understand how information moves, how trust is built, and how civic signal systems can strengthen resilience, decision-making, and collective situational awareness.I am currently developing this work into a formal civic signal systems framework and methodology for use across planning, journalism, emergency management, humanitarian response, and other public-serving fields.

• CV
• About Me
• Writing
• Work
• Contact
• Signal Architecture
• Signal as Infrastructure
• 911 failed. I stepped in.