Typically, authorities are informed by citizens (calls, e-mails, messages, radio) about worsening urban conditions only when the possibilities for action are already limited. The key innovation is that, with the Conecta platform, public administration gains the opportunity to act before situation escalates and threatens citizens’ lives. Technology alerts authorities as soon as abnormal patterns begin to emerge—gaining precious time to act and save lives.
Data is received in a single, open-source-based platform that enables the automation of data flows and creates a visually intuitive, real-time dashboard for public managers dealing with disaster situations.
Its unique because it can be used with any technological device, regardless of type, manufacturer, model, or age. All devices "speak the same language" with Conecta, which makes it suitable for any city in the world with minimal technological infrastructure.

The platform’s minimal viable product (MVP) was extensively tested by public servants specialized and experienced in the implementation and maintenance of technological urban infrastructure. It was also tested from a user experience perspective, achieving a score above 70. Reports are generated automatically and can be easily exported. Currently, PROCEMPA is seeking a small city anywhere in tech world interested in implementing the platform to monitor adverse events.

Porto Alegre's public IT company, PROCEMPA, launched a technological challenge to the Brazilian innovation ecosystem through an open innovation program. PROCEMPA's professionals bring decades of experience in urban technological infrastructure management. The startup NoLeak Defence presented the platform proposal to solve the challenge. Together, through intense collaboration in 2025, PROCEMPA and NoLeak created Conecta and now look for new partners to scale the public value.

1) PROCEMPA Employees: public officials were able to work on a project they always dreamed (but never had the time for), resulting in deep professional fulfillment.
2) Government: Through PROCEMPA, Porto Alegre holds the rights to the technology needed to manage climate extremes.
3) NoLeak (Startup): the project allowed them to dive deep into public sector operations and build expertise in government infrastructure and network.
4) Citizens receive a more reliable and efficient service.

The Conecta platform delivered satisfactory results, meeting all technical and operational requirements of PROCEMPA's open innovation challenge, including high accuracy and user experience. The final evaluation was conducted by public servants with decades of expertise in network management, radio communications, video surveillance, and data processing. With the pilot successfully completed, team is now seeking a partner city to adopt the platform and establish first case study. Porto Alegre is not the ideal candidate due to its large scale (over one million inhabitants); the implementation will be more effectively executed in a smaller-sized city.

Midway through the project, team encountered a usability failure that almost led to full failure: alerts appeared on the dashboards, but they couldn't be converted into actionable demands to be routed to the responsible department. At this stage, the public servants' experience was crucial in explaining the operational reality, and a design team was brought in to integrate the project and plan a comprehensive workflow and usability testing. It turned to have positive impact, because team realised that the platform could also be used as a tool to provide greater transparency to citizens about public sector actions in extreme events.
Privacy data was a challenge, so the initiative opted, from the beginning, for an on-premises solution - own data center.

Executive Support: Strong backing from PROCEMPA’s top management. Directors supported and participated in the project from start to finish.
Human Resources: Employees were encouraged by their leadership to actively participate in meetings and project activities.
Financial Resources: PROCEMPA allocated approximately $10,000 to compensate the startup, NoLeak Defence.
Methodology: "A 'learning by doing' approach was adopted. PROCEMPA employees completed an innovation course and a challenge workshop before interacting with the startup.
Legal Framework: This was the first time the provisions of Complementary Law 182/2021 (the 'New Legal Framework for Startups') were applied. This required a proactive stance from PROCEMPA.

At Procempa, the team learned that it is possible to quickly bring to life projects that, using only internal resources, would take years to be completed. Through an unprecedented partnership with a startup, development time was drastically reduced. Furthermore, the startup members brought intense operational experience, knowledge of the latest market trends and expertise in the open-source platform Apache Nifi. During the initial project analysis, the team realised importance of open-source solutions to improve scalability and in future extend the platform so it could be adopted by various governments without dependency on a private vendor. Additionally, because it dealt with images of people, privacy was a constant concern, which led to time consuming process to plan the privacy terms.

This project was heavily influenced by the climate disaster that caused the historic flooding of the city of Porto Alegre and the state of Rio Grande do Sul in May 2024 (https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/floods-engulf-porto-alegre-152795/). The local and global trend is toward the intensification and higher frequency of extreme events like the one suffered in May 2024, and one government's solution can help many others. Team strongly believes that Connecta is a great tool that can help governments to deal better with urban chaos caused by severe weather conditions, generating and analyzing data to better understand the new scenario they are in and how to act and legislate to better respond to reality, saving lives and resources.