A new digital platform will allow Brazil to react faster to extreme weather events and to better forecast the consequences of climate change. Sistema Inteligente de Previsäo de Extremos Climáticos (SIPEC) – the smart system for prediction of extreme climates – is created by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and RNP, the national research and education network (NREN) of Brazil.
Combining Artificial Intelligence, IoT (Internet-of-Things), and climatic models, the system can forecast severe meteorological events with high accuracy.
“Since RNP is present across the entire national territory and has the capacity for connecting multiple institutions, the collaboration was seen as a natural step towards achieving the scale and reach necessary for the project,” says Wanderley Mendes, scientist at INPE.
Real-time data processing is necessary
For INPE, the collaboration represents important progress towards the construction of a national network for collection and processing of climate data.
“The technical challenges were huge, primarily due to the necessity of rapidly establishing a secure operational environment with a high level of involvement for collection and processing of meteorological data in real-time,” says Wanderley Mendes, adding that the team at RNP was able to address all requests from INPE during the project:
“This integration is fundamental in strengthening the collaboration between scientific institutions and data providers, establishing a national level climate monitoring infrastructure.”
Successful demonstration at UN conference
Proof-of-concept for SIPEC has been achieved in collaboration with Laboratório Nacional Multiusuário (RNP’s national innovation testbed) which set up the computational environment and connectivity infrastructure for the experiment. A demonstration was carried out at the United Nation’s conference on climate change, COP30, in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025.
“INPE was looking for an infrastructure able to validate SIPEC in an (computational, ed.) environment of high availability, scalability, and security. Through its Laboratório Nacional Multiusuário, RNP was able to offer just this type of advanced support, seeing the COP30 as the perfect occasion for demonstrating Proof-of-Concept,” says Elenice Pedrosa, support analyst at RNP, continuing:
“SIPEC showcases how technological innovation and climate science may jointly assist the country in mitigating the risks and adapt to the consequences of climate change.”
The text is inspired by the article “RNP apoia INPE, UFRA, UFPA e Prodepa em Provas de Conceito para a COP30” (in Portuguese) at the RNP website.
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