A Flash Flood Early Warning System: Algorithm and Architecture

The flash flood is one of the most lethal forms of natural hazards and every year damages colossal properties and causes human deaths. An early flash flood detection and warning system can provide an effective solution to this problem by giving people sufficient time to evacuate and protect their life and property. On the other hand, presently Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based systems are widely used as an effective warning system against different hazard scenarios e.g.; fire, tsunami etc. Such WSN based system can also be design to generate an early warning against the Flash Flood and such system is high on demand. This system will be having sensor nodes, processing unit and warning unit etc, for successful prediction and warning generation. Under present work, a WSN based indigenously designed, low cost, accurate and automated Flash Flood Early Warning (FFEW) system has been proposed and studied with technical details. The algorithm of the central processing unit/block for the proposed system has been implemented with MATLAB Simulink and also hardware implemented with PIC microcontroller. Experimental outcomes show that such system will be very much effective to generate a valuable early warning against the devastating flash floods and will be helpful in preventing huge collateral damage.