HERO: Hybrid Effortless Resilient Operation Stations for Flash Flood Early Warning Systems

Abstract

Floods are the most frequent type of natural disaster. Flash floods are one of the most common types of floods, caused by rapid and excessive rainfall. Normally, when a flash flood occurs, the water of the upstream river increases rapidly and flows to the downstream watersheds. The overflow of water increasingly submerges villages in the drainage basins. Flash flood early warning systems are required to mitigate losses. Water level monitoring stations can be installed at upstream river areas. However, telemetry stations face several challenges because the upstream river areas are far away and lack of public utilities (e.g., electric power and telephone lines). This research proposes hybrid effortless resilient operation stations, named HERO stations, in the flash flood early warning system. The HERO station was designed and developed with a modular design concept to be effortlessly customized and maintained. The HERO station adapts its working operation against the environmental changes to maintain a long working period with high data sensing accuracy. Moreover, the HERO station can switch its communication mode between the centralized and decentralized communication modes to increase availability. The network of the HERO stations has already been deployed in the northern part of Thailand. It results in improvements of the telemetry station’s availability. The HERO stations can adapt to environmental changes. The flash flood early warning messages can be disseminated to the villagers to increase the flood preparation time and to reduce flash flood damage.

A Systematic Review of Existing Early Warning Systems’ Challenges and Opportunities in Cloud Computing Early Warning Systems

“…For example, the extended "integrated particle filter" (IPFx) is an automated earthquake source identification system for the "Japanese earthquake early warning" (EEW) system, which sends early warnings during active seismicity [27]. Floods are the most frequent type of natural disaster, and the challenges with a flood EWS include the accurate sensing of flood to prevent damage to property and life [28], determination of the warning module's threshold, hydraulic model development, and calibration [29]. An example of a flood-based EWS that leverages the web-application technology, server, and IoT has been proposed by [30].…”

Discharge Monitoring in Open-Channels: An Operational Rating Curve Management Tool

“… Example of hydrometric rod installed by the Civil Protection in the municipality of Acqualagna (PU), Candigliano basin. The hydrometric rod (also called staff gauge [ 5 ]) is made of anodized aluminum with anti-corrosion treatment to resist even environments with contaminants and abrasions. The high color iridescent effects allow excellent visibility of scale even at a considerable distance and in any application (concrete, bricks, soil, etc.).…”

“…When the risk maps are defined, strategic areas can be identified where monitoring is a priority. Here, control stations can be installed to acquire data to be used for analysis, modeling, and early warning [ 5 ]. In the framework of flood control, we focus on the aspect of river monitoring.…”