TABA

Inspiration

The 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, revealed how climate disasters are not only environmental events, but failures of communication, coordination, and urban systems. Entire cities were submerged, roads collapsed, and power and connectivity were lost at the exact moment when fast, reliable information was most needed.

What became clear was that many of the most critical issues—blocked streets, power outages, waste accumulation, and rising water levels—were visible to residents long before they reached emergency systems. However, there was no unified, accessible way for communities to report risks, share local information, or support preventive action.

TABA was inspired by this gap: the absence of a community-centered digital channel capable of translating lived experience into actionable data during both emergencies and everyday urban life.

What it does

TABA is a crowdsourcing platform designed to strengthen urban resilience and emergency response. The application enables citizens to report incidents such as flooding, road obstructions, power failures, and sanitation issues, creating a real-time map of urban vulnerabilities.

By combining everyday reports with emergency alerts, TABA supports both disaster response and preventive urban maintenance, helping cities identify risks before they escalate into crises.

How we built it

The project followed an applied research approach, combining case study analysis and prototyping.

First, we analyzed official reports, scientific literature, and media coverage related to the 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods to identify recurring urban and social vulnerabilities. These insights directly informed the platform’s core features.

Based on this analysis, we developed a initial prototype using Figma, focusing on:

• Simplicity and accessibility

• Clear incident reporting flows

• Visual mapping of community-reported data

To validate the concept, we conducted a national survey with 24 participants from different regions of Brazil. The results showed strong alignment between the identified vulnerabilities and user expectations, with 62.5% expressing willingness to adopt the platform and 75% prioritizing rapid access to incident information.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• Designing a prototype grounded in empirical disaster analysis

• Validating the concept with users, with 62.5% expressing willingness to adopt the platform

• Creating a model that connects emergency response and prevention in a single tool

What's next for TABA

The next step for TABA is to move beyond prototyping and into full application development. This includes starting the actual programming of the platform, transforming the current design into a functional mobile application with core features such as incident reporting, real-time mapping, and user notifications.

Future development will focus on building a robust, scalable architecture, optimizing performance for low-connectivity environments, and conducting pilot tests with real users. These steps will allow TABA to evolve from a validated concept into a practical tool capable of supporting communities during real climate emergencies.

Built With

• figma