Sensor Grid Predicts Imminent Flooding

An anonymous reader writes, "NewScientistTech has an interesting story about a river sensor network that not only measures water depth and flow, but also forms a wireless computing grid to calculate possible flooding scenarios." From the article: "If the river's behavior starts to change, the network uses the data collected to run models and predict what will happen next. If a flood seems likely — because it is rapidly rising and moving quickly — the network can send a wireless warning containing the details... [A researcher said:] 'One end goal would be that people living in areas that flood can install these themselves. They are simple and robust enough to make that possible.'"

The Problem With Reliance

[gt_mattex]

My main question is there a fail safe in place?

If citizens become reliant on it they may become slow to react without the system giving the go ahead. Such assurances can be easily and unintentionally abused when those that were once advocates for common sense become used to automation.

.... EVERYBODY PANIC!!

[billstewart]

Oh, wait, this is Slashdot, not Fark. My bad....

Actually, some of this is really interesting technology. A few projects along these lines have been Motes and Smart Dust at Berkeley, and at least one of the groups named their project after the Larsen Localizers from Vernor Vinge's books even though getting that small is a ways out. Gumstix is a bit bigger, so there are a few more options and a bit less work on customization required compared to the smaller devices.

Overkill?

[Roger W Moore]

The river swale, also in the Yorkshire dales, used to have a water level up the dale at Muker which rang a bell in Richmond police station about 40 miles downstream so that the police could come out and clear the tourists picnicing on the river banks when there was a cloud burst up on the tops and the sun was still shining in Richmond and the river was about to rapidly rise.

Reading the article I wonder whether this vastly more complex system is really going to work when the river is in full flood and metre sized boulders are scouring out the river bed and banks. I've seen Bluetooth mice having trouble communicating in indoor conditions at a distance of 2 metres.

Still it is not all bad - at least the sheep will get to enjoy their own WiFi connection.

Mk.1 Eyeball

[Kadin2048]

I for one would much sooner welcome some old guy sitting on his porch by the river bank than any number of wireless water-sensing overlords.

The best part is that the NOAA has a "sensor net" for that type of 'remote data sensor' already. It's called "SKYWARN [skywarn.org]" (beware, there is some sort of hideous applet or something on their page, it got my machine's HD thrashing for half a minute while FF froze) and it provides some really good coverage of stuff that might not get picked up by mechanical sensors. It wouldn't be cost effective, for example, to put a sensor network that measures the size of hail, all over the Midwest. Yet hail sizes can be an important part of tornado predictions.

Also, some spotter organizations are affiliated with Ham radio clubs and can operate entirely without infrastructure, meaning that you can retain some remote-sensing capability even in the midst of a weather-related disaster: exactly when you need it most.

Sometimes the "Mark 1 eyeball" and its accessories really are the best tools for the job. I suspect, knowing the government, that SKYWARN doesn't get a hundredth of the funding that various pet fancy-gadget-du-jour projects do.

Santos City's sensor grid

[Ed Molinari - Swell]

In Santos city, São Paulo-Brazil (yes! Where the big soccer player named Pele came from), we have a similar product, which is operating for 4 years and working fine! As part of city is localized over an island, with an average of 2 meters of height, it had built a network of drainage channels crossing the city, discarding the excess of pluvial waters to the Atlantic Ocean.

This network of channels was done in the early XX century by Saturnino de Brito, making the city the best in wastewater/drainage infra-structure of the country. But these channels, that looks like artificial rivers, has been used by clandestine wastewater links that makes the water contaminated, decreasing the environmental condition of the water which would be discarded on the ocean, effecting directly the condition of the beaches and bringing reflexes on the tourism industry of region.

To solve this problem, the seven points of discarding on the beach was blocked by a barrage and the water of channels is redirected to a treatment station before reaches the ocean. However, when the tropical rains hits the region, these barrages must be opened to avoiding the flood on city, so it was implemented a wireless network of sensors in the channels that monitors their depth, and when this depth is approaching a critic value, the barrages are opened automatically.

This is an example of use case of a first world science and technology issue to solve, in practice, the environmental condition, realized by a third world city government.
Check it out at http://www.santos.sp.gov.br/ [sp.gov.br]



Eduardo Molinari
Swell Technology & Oceanography
Santos - Brazil