TIER

UC Berkeley’s Technologies and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) project aims to accelerate the development of information technology for the billions of people in the emerging regions of the world. Historically, most such projects have relied on technologies developed for the affluent world, but imported technologies often fail to address key challenges in cost, deployment, power consumption, and support for semi-literate and illiterate users.

Led by Dr. Eric Brewer, TIER focuses on developing a hardware/software infrastructure explicitly designed for the physical, political, and economic realities of developing areas. The project addresses the technical and organizational challenges of these realities with novel technology, while validating the impact through real-world deployments.

TIER embodies the iterative and multi-disciplinary development approach that is a core principle of DIL. TIER’s current key projects are in the areas of communications and power, and include the Village Base Station (low-cost cell tower), renewable energy AC- and DC-microgrids, and software-defined networks for managing rural wireless networks. These projects generate high-frequency usage data which will be integrated into the Mezuri Platform.

Learn more at the TIER website.