Changelog

What's new.

The features, improvements and fixes shipping to OpenWatch. We build in the open and ship often.

  1. ImprovedAlerts plan and up

    Jump straight from an alert to the incident

    The 'View on dashboard' link in alert emails now opens that exact incident, not the home view, even if you have to log in first.

    ImprovedAlerts plan and up

    Cleaner area selection for Watches

    The area picker now covers every local government area in Nigeria, including quiet ones, with duplicate and mislabelled names cleaned up. Watches match incidents to the right area more reliably.

    Improved

    Faster on breaking news

    Breaking incidents now reach your map and alerts faster, closer to when they are first reported.

  2. Improved

    Confidence that tracks the reporting

    An incident's confidence now rises with every outlet that corroborates it, so a widely-reported event shows as confirmed as the sources come in and the label matches the weight of evidence.

  3. Improved

    Fewer duplicate incidents

    The pipeline is now better at recognising when several reports describe the same event and folding them into one. Your feed shows a single clean incident instead of a cluster of near-duplicates.

  4. ImprovedProfessional and up

    Sharper route risk

    Route assessments now weigh only the threats that actually affect a journey: kidnapping, armed robbery, banditry and unrest along the corridor. Online fraud, scams and other off-road incident types no longer dilute the score, so a route's rating reflects what you would realistically face on the road.

  5. NewProfessional and up

    Case files

    Related incidents no longer sit in isolation. OpenWatch now threads them into a single case file that grows as the story develops, with an AI-written narrative of what happened, a full chronological timeline, and links back to every source incident. You can follow an abduction from the first report through to the arrest or resolution, all in one place.

  6. Improved

    Built for mobile

    The dashboard now adapts cleanly to any screen size. On phones you get a dedicated bottom navigation bar and layouts that reflow to fit, so the map, feed and alerts are just as usable in the field as they are at your desk.

  7. ImprovedProfessional and up

    Live research answers

    The research desk now streams its answer as the model writes it, rather than making you wait for the whole response. You watch the analysis take shape line by line and can start reading the moment the first sentence lands.

    NewAlerts plan and up

    Watch-area email alerts

    Set a watch on any place, an LGA, a town, or a travel corridor, and OpenWatch emails you the moment a new incident is confirmed inside it. No need to keep checking the map: the alert comes to you with the incident details and a direct link to it.

  8. New

    Weekly security digest

    Every Sunday evening, free accounts receive a short email digest of what happened in their state over the past week: the notable incidents, the trend, and anything worth keeping an eye on. It is a simple way to stay current without opening the dashboard every day.

  9. New

    Group filter and satellite view

    You can now filter the map by the group behind an incident, isolating a specific bandit network, cult or militant actor to see where it operates. A new satellite basemap toggle also swaps the map for imagery when terrain and ground detail matter.

  10. New

    OpenWatch on iOS and Android

    The OpenWatch mobile app is live on both the App Store and Google Play. It brings the live map and incident feed to your pocket, and adds push notifications that alert you to high-severity incidents happening near your location.

  11. NewAlerts plan and up

    Watches and Alerts

    Watches let you monitor the places that matter to you, a facility, a neighbourhood, or a route you travel, and be alerted the instant something happens there. Choose the incident types and severity you care about, and OpenWatch does the watching for you in real time.

  12. NewProfessional and up

    Research desk

    Ask questions of the entire incident record in plain language and get back a sourced, cited answer drawn only from verified reports, never invented. Your conversations are saved, so you can pick an investigation back up exactly where you left it.

    New

    State Risk Index

    A single view that ranks every Nigerian state by risk, built from the same underlying incident data as the rest of the platform. Compare states at a glance and see which are trending up or down.

  13. Improved

    Precise map pins

    Incidents now drop at their specific reported location rather than a state or city centre, with clearer markers that keep dense areas readable. Whenever we can resolve an exact place, the pin goes there.

  14. New

    Public API

    The full incident dataset is now queryable through a public API at api.openwatch.ng. Pull incidents straight into your own tools, dashboards or models, with a free tier to get started.

  15. New

    Heatmaps and live counts

    Dense regions now render as heatmaps that show where incidents concentrate, alongside live counts and time-range filters. You can move from a national overview down to a single hotspot without losing the picture.