Building OmniWatch: A Real-Time Global Intelligence Dashboard

How I built a 48-source OSINT intelligence platform that tracks earthquakes, military aircraft, conflict zones, cyber threats, and financial markets — all in one dashboard.

MS

Masood Sultan

Apr 15, 2026 · 2 min read

The Vision

What if you could see everything happening in the world, right now, on a single screen?

Not the filtered-for-engagement version on social media. The raw signal. Earthquakes as they happen. Military aircraft in the air. Container ships transiting through Hormuz. Cyber vulnerabilities being exploited. Market indices ticking. Prediction markets shifting.

That's what OmniWatch does.

Architecture

OmniWatch is built on a Next.js + Express stack:

  • Backend: Express server running 48 data source clients in parallel using Promise.allSettled()
  • Frontend: Next.js with react-map-gl rendering 600+ live signals on a dark-matter base map
  • Live Tracking: Dedicated 15-second polling loop for aircraft (OpenSky) and vessel positions
  • AI Layer: Ollama-powered J.A.R.V.I.S assistant that can analyze the entire intelligence picture

The 48 Sources

The data is organized into 8 tiers:

  1. Environment & Hazard: USGS earthquakes, NASA fires, NOAA weather, air quality, space weather, radiation
  2. Military & Conflict: ADS-B aircraft, GDELT events, Ukraine frontlines, ACLED conflict data
  3. Aviation & Maritime: OpenSky flights, AIS vessel tracking, rail networks
  4. Economics & Markets: FRED indicators, Treasury yields, Yahoo Finance, prediction markets
  5. Cyber & Security: CISA vulnerabilities, OpenSanctions, Cloudflare Radar
  6. Health & Humanitarian: WHO disease alerts, ReliefWeb, EPA RadNet
  7. Social Intelligence: Reddit OSINT, Bluesky monitoring
  8. SIGINT & Infrastructure: SatNOGS, KiwiSDR, power plants, data centers, CCTV

Lessons Learned

The biggest challenge was race conditions. When 48 async data sources all fire simultaneously and the frontend polls every 10 seconds, you need proper mutex protection on your sweep cycle. A simple boolean flag (sweepInProgress) solved hours of debugging.

What's Next

I'm working on adding Telegram/Discord alert bots, historical delta tracking, and a 3D globe visualization. The goal is to make OmniWatch the most comprehensive open-source intelligence platform available.

OmniWatch is open source. Check the GitHub repo for the full code.

#osint#nextjs#typescript#opensky#geopolitics#real-time
MS

Written by Masood Sultan

Computational geoscientist and AI engineer. Focuses on spatial data algorithms, climate modeling architectures, and open-source intelligence scraping.

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