We are glad to share another important update from our project, “Empowering Emergency Communications: New Packet Radio and Go Box Deployment in Thailand.”

From 28–30 March 2026, knowledge from this project was shared in Chiang Rai Province, with participation from the Chiang Rai Provincial Monitoring Center, which joined learning activities on New Packet Radio (NPR). 

This activity was especially meaningful because Chiang Rai is exactly the kind of place this project was designed to support. 

Chiang Rai faces recurring communication challenges during disasters. Last year, the province experienced major flooding that caused parts of the telephone system to fail. At the same time, large wildfires occur in Chiang Rai every year, creating repeated risks for communities and responders. The province also includes many mountainous and remote areas, where some locations still have limited or no internet and telephone service even under normal conditions.

In places like this, resilient communications are not optional. They are essential. 

That is why New Packet Radio matters. NPR can help provide a practical communication option in areas where conventional systems are unavailable, unreliable, or disrupted by disaster. For a province like Chiang Rai, this makes NPR more than just an interesting technology—it becomes a potentially valuable tool for preparedness, coordination, and local resilience.

What made this activity especially valuable was that the learning process covered the full operational chain, not only the radio technology itself. The exercise began with shipping the equipment overland using Thailand Post, followed by local pickup at the post office in Chiang Rai. Participants then went through the process of unboxing, installing, operating, testing, and finally packing and returning the equipment after the training.

This matters because real emergency communication capacity is not built only by demonstrating equipment in ideal conditions. It is built when local teams learn how to handle the entire process themselves: receiving the equipment, setting it up in their own environment, making it work, testing it, and managing the return logistics properly. In other words, the activity was not just a technology briefing. It was a practical exercise in deployment readiness.

For our project, this is an encouraging sign that the work is reaching communities and institutions that face real operational need. It also shows growing interest from local disaster-related organizations in learning communication approaches that can still function when ordinary infrastructure fails. 

We are grateful to everyone who has supported this project. Your support is helping bring practical emergency communication knowledge to high-risk areas in Thailand, where stronger local capacity can make a real difference when the next disaster comes.