Local Open Knowledge Access

Discover the world
around you.

Stories, people and places hiding in plain sight, geo-tagged, shared and alive. LOKA is a living map of the world, built by everyone.

A Socratus Digital Practice product · the place layer of the knowledge commons · discoverloka.org

What LOKA is

A neighbourhood, as a living map.

LOKA turns any place into a digital twin where every marker is a story, a species, a lesson, a hazard or a call to action, tied to a real spot on the ground. Four simple moves:

Explore·Discover·Map·Contribute

The layers people map

Living Culture Local Finds Nature Connect Hidden Gems Civic Hazards

In the field: pilots in Bhitarkanika National Park (mapping the park and its resources) and Melukote (local eco-tourism).

The app, in your hand

Discover, map, and read a place in AR.

LOKA is a live iOS app. Browse what people have tagged nearby, see it all on the map, open the full story, or point your camera and read a place in augmented reality.

LOKA Discover feed: tagged places nearby with category filters — **Discover**what’s around you

LOKA map: tags placed as pins across the city — **Map**every tag, placed

LOKA tag detail: photo, description, auto-generated labels and location — **Detail**the full story

LOKA AR view: a tag overlaid on the real world through the camera — **AR View**read the world

AI in the field

Point your phone.
LOKA does the rest.

A resident photographs a roadside bloom and adds one line. LOKA identifies the species and turns the sighting into a structured, searchable record.

“Flower cluster of the Silver Oak tree.”

#grevillea-robusta #botanical-specimen #coiled-inflorescence #yellow-blooms

Researchers get structured biodiversity data

For everyone: understand what is around you, and share what you find.

LOKA app: a Silver Oak bloom, auto-tagged in the field

New · loka.place

Spaces: your own layer
of the map.

From the LOKA dashboard at loka.place, create a Space around a set of tags, decide exactly who can see and edit it, and keep it as open or as private as the work needs.

Permissioned

Assign read and write access per person, so a Space has clear authors and clear audiences.

Private

Keep a Space off the public map entirely, visible only to the people you invite.

Controlled

Greater control over what gets generated and shared within the Space, tag by tag.

New · built for the field

Works where the
signal doesn't.

The places worth mapping often have the weakest connectivity. LOKA's offline mode caches content, images and maps on the device, so people can keep exploring and contributing with limited or no network, and sync when they are back in range.

Cached content Offline images Downloaded maps Sync when back online

Public or private, every Space works the same offline, then syncs the moment a signal returns.

Use cases · in the community

What a living map
makes possible.

Once a place is mapped by the people who know it, the same layer serves very different needs at once.

Conservation

Biodiversity records

Rangers and visitors log species and habitats until a park has a living account of what lives where.

Heritage

Living-culture trails

Pin oral histories, festivals, temples and crafts to the exact streets they belong to.

Tourism

Self-guided journeys

Build eco-tourism routes where every stop carries a story, not just a location.

Civic

Community reporting

Residents map flooding spots, broken lights and unsafe crossings for the ward to act on.

Livelihoods

The local economy, mapped

Sellers, farmers and makers put their produce and crafts where people can actually find them.

Education

Fieldwork for students

Classes build a living map of local flora, water and history as part of how they learn.

Use cases · for institutions & teams

Private Spaces,
offline-ready.

With permissioned Spaces and full offline capture, LOKA carries teams doing serious fieldwork, not just open exploration.

Research

Field survey teams

A private Space for structured surveys, captured offline in remote sites and synced on return.

Protected areas

Reserve management

Map assets, patrols and habitats across a park in one controlled, permissioned layer.

Development

Programme monitoring

NGOs track interventions across villages, keeping sensitive data inside a private Space.

Relief

Response without signal

Cached maps and offline records keep teams oriented in low-connectivity disaster zones.

Enterprise

Facilities & onboarding

Map a campus or factory for internal navigation and place-anchored staff orientation.

Coalitions

Shared landscape maps

Many partners contribute to one permissioned map of a programme or region.

Any neighbourhood can become a living archive, readable to itself.

discoverloka.org → loka.place dashboard →