When the towers fall, the warnings stop. SafeGround changes that.
In 2022, the United Nations made the most ambitious commitment in the history of disaster risk reduction. We are now deep into the implementation window — and the gap between commitment and reality is stark.
DEADLINE: 31 DECEMBER 2027
The Mandate
Launched by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at COP27 in November 2022, Early Warnings for All (EW4All) is a global initiative to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems against increasingly extreme weather and climate-related hazards by the end of 2027.
The initiative is led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in partnership with UNDRR, ITU, IFRC, and national meteorological and hydrological services worldwide. Its implementation framework is built around four interconnected pillars that together constitute a functional multi-hazard early warning system.
The target is not aspirational. It is a formal UN commitment — and the evidence is clear that early warning systems are among the most cost-effective investments in disaster risk reduction that exist. The challenge is not knowledge. It is infrastructure.
Current Coverage Gap
Source: WMO Global Status of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems, 2024
Over 90% of disaster-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries — precisely those with the least existing early warning infrastructure. A 24-hour warning can reduce disaster-related deaths by up to 30%. A multi-hazard system reduces economic losses by up to 10× its implementation cost.
EW4All Framework
A functional multi-hazard early warning system requires more than a sensor. It requires four interconnected pillars — and SafeGround is designed to address all four, with particular focus on the pillar that most systems fail: last-mile dissemination.
Understanding the hazards, vulnerabilities, and exposures in a given area. SafeGround's AI intelligence layer continuously polls multi-source hazard data — seismic, meteorological, hydrological, and satellite fire monitoring — to build contextual risk knowledge for each deployment area.
SafeGround contribution: AI threat intelligence, USGS/EMSC/Copernicus integrationReal-time environmental monitoring across a range of hazard types. The SENTINEL device provides continuous seismic monitoring (ADXL345), barometric pressure trending, and GPS position data, feeding the Admin Hub intelligence layer alongside external data sources.
SafeGround contribution: SENTINEL seismic + environmental sensors, satellite data fusionGetting the warning to every person who needs it — in time to act. This is the pillar where most existing systems fail catastrophically: they depend on the same cellular and internet infrastructure that disasters destroy. SafeGround's LoRa mesh bypasses this entirely.
SafeGround primary capability: infrastructure-independent last-mile deliveryA warning is only valuable if people know what to do with it. SafeGround supports post-event communications through standardised SitRep and Resource Request message types — and the same infrastructure that delivers warnings enables coordinated response communications when everything else has failed.
SafeGround contribution: post-event SitRep mesh comms, ATAK integration for respondersThe Infrastructure Problem
"Every major disaster response assessment in the last decade has identified the same failure mode: warning systems that depend on the infrastructure the disaster has just destroyed."
— SafeGround Technical White Paper, 2026
The majority of national early warning systems route final-mile alerts via SMS or push notification — both dependent on cellular infrastructure. Tower damage, power failure, and network congestion during disaster events create exactly the conditions under which cellular delivery fails. The warning never reaches the people who need it.
Even in countries with functional national systems, coverage gaps in remote, rural, and mountainous areas can be near-total. These are frequently the communities with the highest hazard exposure and the lowest resilience. The economics of commercial infrastructure investment do not naturally serve these areas.
Warning messages that reach a district hub but not individual households are not early warning systems — they are early warning for administrators. SafeGround is built around the last-mile problem as the primary design constraint, not an afterthought.
LoRa mesh networks operate on unlicensed spectrum, require no SIM cards, function without internet, and self-heal around node failures. The infrastructure SafeGround creates is precisely the infrastructure that disasters cannot destroy — because it has no central point of failure and no dependency on commercial telecommunications.
Join the Solution
SafeGround is an open project. We are actively seeking pilot site partners, technical collaborators, researchers, and funders who understand that the 2027 deadline is not a marketing number — it is a commitment that will define how many lives are saved in the decade ahead.