This website brings together the technical documentation and records produced during the development of the project Technologies for Rapid Response to Incidents and Climate Disasters – Tridecs, an initiative of the Instituto Nupef.
The Problem: When Infrastructure Fails
In a climate disaster, communication is often one of the first things to fail.
Power outages shut down cell towers. Cables are damaged. Within minutes, entire neighborhoods become isolated, unable to ask for help or coordinate basic actions. Without communication, rescue teams take longer to understand what is happening. Affected people do not know where to go or how to find support.
This information gap can cost lives.
When traditional communication technologies fail, an urgent question arises: How can communication be restored quickly, simply, and independently from existing infrastructure? The solution must work in the first moments of a crisis, when every minute matters. And it must serve both rescue teams and the affected community.
Tridecs is a project that seeks to understand this scenario. The proposal is a kit of autonomous communication solutions that can be rapidly deployed in affected areas, enabling the restoration of contact, coordination of actions, and support for initial climate disaster response.
What are we trying to understand in this scenario?
In this first phase of the project, we went into the field to understand what happens when communication breaks down during floods, flash floods, and wildfires.
We spoke with crisis response teams, organizations, and communities to observe how people organize themselves with what is available and what is most lacking in the early moments of a crisis.
We also mapped technologies that do not rely on traditional networks, aiming to identify which ones truly work in extreme scenarios and can keep essential information flowing.
From this, we arrived at a central question: would it be possible to create a single kit capable of responding to different climate disasters in Brazil?
We are continuing to develop this answer. But we already know the essentials. This kit must be modular, operate autonomously, and be simple enough for anyone to use, even under pressure.
Want to understand how we got here?
Access the project diary and see how we analyzed different climate disaster scenarios in Brazil and the use of technology in each territory, by clicking here.
What have we discovered along the way?
Throughout this phase, it became clear that communication in climate disasters is not just about having a signal. It is about ensuring that information continues to flow when everything else stops working.
Based on research and field tests, we identified three essential principles: the network must adapt to the scale of the climate disaster, operate without external power, and be simple enough for immediate use.
These insights reinforced a central point. No single technology solves the problem on its own.
The solution lies in the right combination.
That is why we focused on three complementary fronts:
Local Wi-Fi, using portable routers to create accessible connection areas for any mobile phone. Handheld radios, ensuring direct voice communication even in areas without coverage. And LoRa with the MeshTastic protocol, enabling messaging and location sharing with low power consumption in isolated areas.
These technologies form the foundation of what we are building, and we continue testing how they work together in different real-world scenarios.
What made these technologies stand out?
Explore the tests and insights in the project diary, by clicking here.
A project in progress, closely documented
Tridecs is still under development.
Each field test, every technology decision, and every lesson learned help shape the direction of the project.
On the blog, we share this process openly: what works, what does not, and what we are adjusting over time.
Follow along as these decisions are made.