TRACEIT – A Smart Lost & Found Management System

Communities and institutions routinely manage lost and found items using unorganized physical boxes or scattered social media groups, resulting in unstructured processes, limited geospatial context, and low asset recovery rates. This paper presents TRACEIT, a full-stack web application built on Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB Atlas, HTML/CSS/JS, and the Leaflet.js mapping API. TRACEIT delivers a centralized, location-aware platform offering interactive map-based reporting, real-time directory filtering, and categorized item tracking. A frictionless, no-login architecture utilizes a secure 4-digit PIN system, granting users full control over their reports for lifecycle management without the hurdle of permanent account registration. The system continuously updates and displays active lost-and-found cases, filtering them by item type and exact geographical coordinates on each directory load. Experimental validation and user testing confirmed the correctness of all modules, demonstrating high geospatial accuracy with API response times remaining under 200 ms and overall request processing under 500 ms. TRACEIT directly resolves three critical gaps identified across existing systems: the lack of precise interactive location tracking, the heavy dependency on tedious user authentication, and the absence of lightweight, secure post-lifecycle management.