MERLIN: a secure, blackout-resilient communication system for emergency communication and critical entities integration

Abstract Regional emergencies caused by extreme weather events can lead to outages of critical infrastructures, including power supply, telephony, and mobile communications, leaving affected regions cut off from external support. For situation assessment and decision support, the status of critical infrastructures such as drinking water supplies and emergency shelter occupancy must be known at all times, even when conventional communication channels are unavailable, unreliable, or severely hampered by topographic challenges. This article presents MERLIN (Messaging with Regional LoRa Infrastructure), a research prototype currently undergoing endurance testing in the Austrian municipality of Neuhaus, as the first major application of the ROLORAN Disaster Communication Protocol (RDCP). MERLIN uses LoRa to enable secure, resilient communication between emergency services, the population, and operators of critical entities, contributing to crisis management during large-scale communication outages.