Development of responsive disaster early warning system using hybrid telemetry station network

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 in upstream rivers. However, telemetry stations face several challenges because the upstream river areas are far away and lack public utilities (e.g., electric power and telephone lines). This research proposed hybrid effortless resilient operation stations, named HERO stations, in the flash flood early warning system. The HERO station has been 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. The network of the HERO stations has already been deployed in the northern part of Thailand. It results in improvements to the availability of the telemetry station. The HERO stations can adapt to environmental changes. The flash flood early warning messages can be disseminated to the villagers to increase the golden hour for flood preparation and to reduce flash flood damage.