tilfluktsrom/STANDING_ON_SHOULDERS.md

Standing on Shoulders

How many people made this app possible?

Tilfluktsrom is a small Android app — about 900 source files — that helps Norwegians find their nearest public shelter in an emergency. One person built it in under a day. But that was only possible because of the accumulated work of roughly 100,000–120,000 identifiable people, spanning decades, countries, and disciplines.

This document traces the human effort behind every layer of the stack.

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Layer 0: Physical Infrastructure — GPS & Sensors (~10,500 people)

Component	Role	Est. people
GPS constellation	31 satellites, maintained by US Space Force	~5,000
Magnetometer/compass sensors	Enable the direction arrow to point at shelters	~500
ARM architecture	The CPU instruction set running every Android device	~5,000

Before a single line of code runs, hardware designed by tens of thousands of engineers must be in orbit, in your pocket, and on the circuit board.

Layer 1: Internet & Standards (~5,250 people)

Component	Role	Est. people
TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS	The protocols that carry shelter data from server to phone	~5,000
GeoJSON specification	The format the shelter data is published in (IETF RFC 7946)	~50
EPSG / coordinate reference systems	The math behind UTM33N → WGS84 coordinate conversion	~200

Layer 2: Operating Systems & Runtimes (~27,200 people)

Component	Role	Est. people
Linux kernel	Foundation of Android; ~20,000 documented unique contributors	~20,000
Android (AOSP)	The mobile OS, built on Linux by Google + community	~5,000
JVM / OpenJDK + Java	The language runtime Kotlin compiles to	~2,000
ART (Android Runtime)	Replaced Dalvik; runs the compiled bytecode	~200

Layer 3: Programming Languages (~1,200 people)

Language	Origin	Est. people
Kotlin	JetBrains (Czech Republic/Russia) + community	~500
TypeScript	Microsoft + community (for the PWA)	~500
Groovy / Kotlin DSL	Gradle build scripts	~200

Layer 4: Build Tools & Dev Infrastructure (~5,400 people)

Tool	Role	Est. people
Gradle	Build automation	~500
Android Gradle Plugin	Android-specific build pipeline	~200
KSP (Kotlin Symbol Processing)	Code generation for Room database	~100
R8 / ProGuard	Release minification and optimization	~100
Vite	PWA bundler	~800
Bun	Package manager and JS runtime	~400
Git	Version control	~1,500
Android Studio / IntelliJ	IDE (JetBrains + Google)	~1,500
Maven Central, Google Maven, npm	Package registry infrastructure	~300

Layer 5: Libraries — Android App (~2,550 people)

Library	What it does	Est. people
AndroidX (Core, AppCompat, Activity, Lifecycle)	UI and app architecture foundation	~800
Material Design	Visual design language, research, and components	~500
ConstraintLayout	Flexible screen layouts	~100
Room	Type-safe SQLite wrapper for the shelter cache	~200
WorkManager	Periodic home screen widget updates	~150
Kotlinx Coroutines	Async data loading without blocking the UI	~200
OkHttp (Square)	Downloads the GeoJSON ZIP from Geonorge	~200
OSMDroid	Offline OpenStreetMap rendering	~150
Play Services Location	FusedLocationProvider for precise GPS	~200
SQLite	The embedded database engine	~50

Layer 6: Libraries — PWA (~1,350 people)

Library	Role	Est. people
Leaflet	Interactive web maps (created in Ukraine)	~800
leaflet.offline	Offline tile caching	~20
idb	IndexedDB wrapper for offline storage	~30
vite-plugin-pwa	Service worker and Workbox integration	~100
Vitest	Test framework	~400

Layer 7: Data — The Content That Makes It Useful (~56,000 people)

Source	Role	Est. people
OpenStreetMap	Global map data; ~2M registered mappers, ~10,000+ active in Norway	~50,000
Kartverket / Geonorge	Norwegian Mapping Authority; national geodata infrastructure	~800
DSB (Direktoratet for samfunnssikkerhet og beredskap)	Created and maintains the public shelter registry	~200
The shelter builders	Construction, engineering, civil defense planning since the Cold War	~5,000+

The app's data exists because of Cold War civil defense planning. The shelters were built in the 1950s–80s, digitized by DSB, published via Geonorge's open data mandate — a chain of decisions spanning 70 years that now fits in a 320 KB GeoJSON file.

Layer 8: AI-Assisted Development (~6,000 people)

Component	Role	Est. people
Anthropic / Claude	Researchers, engineers, safety team	~1,000
ML research lineage	Transformers, attention, RLHF, scaling laws — across academia & industry	~5,000
Training data	The collective written output of humanity	incalculable

Layer 9: Distribution (~500 people)

Component	Role	Est. people
F-Droid	Open-source app store infrastructure and review	~300
Fastlane	Metadata and screenshot tooling	~200

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Summary

Layer	People
Physical infrastructure (GPS, ARM, sensors)	~10,500
Internet & standards	~5,250
Operating systems & runtimes	~27,200
Programming languages	~1,200
Build tools & dev infrastructure	~5,400
Direct libraries (Android)	~2,550
Direct libraries (PWA)	~1,350
Data (maps, shelters, geodesy)	~56,000
AI-assisted development	~6,000
Distribution	~500
Conservative total	~116,000

This is conservative. It excludes:

• The millions of OSM mappers globally whose edits feed the tile rendering pipeline
• Hardware manufacturing (semiconductor fabs, device assembly — millions of workers)
• The educators who taught all these people their craft
• The civil defense planners who decided Norway needed public shelters
• The mathematicians behind Haversine, UTM projections, and geodesy going back centuries

Including OpenStreetMap's full contributor base and hardware, the number crosses 2 million easily.

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Perspective

For every line of application code, roughly 100,000 people made the tools, data, and infrastructure that line depends on. No single company, country, or organization could have built this stack alone. Linux (Finland → global), Kotlin (Czech Republic/Russia → JetBrains), OSM (UK → global), GPS (US military → civilian), Leaflet (Ukraine), SQLite (US, public domain) — this emergency app is a product of genuine global cooperation.

The fact that one person can build a working, offline-capable emergency app in under a day is arguably one of the most remarkable expressions of accumulated human cooperation — and almost none of it was coordinated by any central authority.