IoT based early warning system for torrential floods

Abstract

Being predominantly a mountainous country, in Bosnia and Herzegovina natural disasters periodically occur, especially floods, which can cause extensive material damage and human casualties. The existing flood defense system is focused on monitoring the situation on major rivers. In contrast, torrential floods are short-lived but turbulent phenomena, causing landslides, extensive material damage and loss of human lives. By collecting data from characteristic points on the terrain and analyzing them, it is possible to detect a situation which could cause torrential floods further in the river basin. Automated aggregation of such data by the competent services could provide timely organization of flood defenses. By integrating hardware components, sensors, microcontrollers with a web server and custom built software, an early warning system was created capable of providing timely alerts to the risks of pouring of the rivers, as well as the emergence of torrential streams or landslides. The system is based on a network of automatic meteorological stations (AMS), which submit data at regular intervals to a central server, where this data is further processed and displayed to persons with appropriate authorization level to access the system.

Prototype of a Micro Monitoring Station With Remote Torrential Flood Alerts

“…7. AMMS, electronic components [11] Electric power is provided by two Li-Ion battery cells charged by a pair of solar cells, making possible autonomous operation of the AMMS. Due to its light weight and modest dimensions, the AMMS can be easily transported and placed in inaccessible terrain.…”

“…Fig. 9.Text message alert [11] In scenario when a territory or an entire region is covered by a network of AMMSs, each AMMS converts the collected data into JSON format and sends file via mobile internet to the central web server, where data gets stored in the SQL database for further analysis.…”