How Safecast Built a Resilient Radiation Monitoring Network for Wartime Ukraine with Blues
From Infrastructure Failure to Resilient Overlay Networks
Safecast is an international volunteer organization that provides citizens worldwide with open environmental monitoring data. Founded after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, they’ve built the world’s largest open radiation database with 250 million data points.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the same infrastructure vulnerabilities from Fukushima emerged: official radiation sensors went offline precisely when monitoring was most critical. Russian attacks on power grids caused widespread blackouts, knocking government monitoring systems dark for days at a time. Temperature extremes caused sensor malfunctions with no official explanation to concerned citizens.
But what if you could create an independent monitoring network that works even when primary infrastructure fails, deploy sensors in 10 minutes without technical expertise, and operate at 1/50th the cost of official systems?
Enabling Critical Infrastructure Resilience
In this case study, you'll explore how Safecast achieved official government certification, a first for independent emergency response devices, and deployed 70 autonomous monitoring stations that provided the only radiation data from Chernobyl during a week-long power outage.
Deployment Simplicity
Learn how designing for non-technical volunteers enabled 10-minute installations with a simple mounting bracket system. No specialized knowledge, no IT approvals, no infrastructure dependencies; turn it on, mount it, and walk away.
Autonomous Operation
See how unified cellular connectivity replaced managing multiple operators across five continents, enabling seamless global deployments with automatic network selection. See how solar power with battery backup, cellular and satellite connectivity, and automatic failover keep sensors transmitting through power outages, network failures, and temperatures reaching -25°C. When official sensors failed, Radnotes kept working.
Proven Impact at Scale
Discover how 70 deployed sensors provide continuous monitoring near Ukraine's six nuclear power plants and major population centers, combat Russian disinformation campaigns, and deliver independent verification of government data trusted by international agencies.
"Radnote in wartime Ukraine is one of the harshest, most demanding, real-life test situations for Blues Notecard and it's working beautifully."
Download the Case Study
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