Flood Prediction using real time sensing Emergency Water Information Networks over mobile phone networks and WiFi (EWIN)

We are working on ways to monitor flooding in real time using remote water sensing over cellular phone systems. With the predicted impacts of climate change flooding will be a global problem. Minutes of advance warning are important and modern flood warning systems are critical for a country to protect its people and develop and grow its towns and cities. Flooding is the most serious of natural disasters mankind has to cope with in terms of loss of life and the long term effects of flooding have severely adverse social consequences. Unlike the UK that has a mature flood defence system, many countries have not been able to afford the technology and have poor response to flooding. However, many developing countries do now have access to modern cellular phone networks in their towns and cities. So in this project we will discover how to use mobile phone networks combined with WiFi to help countries tackle climate change.

Two teams of researchers from the UK and Mexico, supported by small companies with experts in the fields of water engineering and embedded electronics have come to together to investigate how real time flood monitoring can be done over modern phone systems to provide modern water engineering infrastructure in a cost effective way to quickly make countries vulnerable to flooding more resilient to this most serious of natural disasters.

To improve flood prediction several areas of research need to be addressed. Concisely, the data for real time flood prediction needs be sensed in the right place and at the right time, transmitted in harsh conditions, fused in the cloud and used to make reliable flood prediction models. our research addresses each of these areas using UK expertise in Water Engineering and Radio Communications to complement Mexican knowledge of Water Engineering, Data Networks and Enterprise.

At the end of the project we will have measured parts of and modelled a complete flood prediction network for Mexico and in the process understood how water behaves before, during and after flooding. Mexico is a country of extremes with a dry season where hardly any rain falls and rainy season with volumes of water in rivers unseen in the UK. For the UK climate change is predicted to mean more dynamic and intensive large scale weather effects so there are significant benefits the United Kingdom as well as Mexico and many other countries.

Combined with background research, prototyping of sensors packages and waterway modelling, our teams will be conducting a series of highly targeted field trials - small scale in the UK where rivers and lakes and relatively predictable and medium scale in Mexico where we will seek flood events to be studied in real time.

Two new exciting water sensing technologies, one that uses Doppler radar and another that using similar techniques to face recognition will be used for the first time in this work to detect the water conditions prior and during a flood event. The two techniques are special because they do not need to be in the water and are therefore much harder to wash away than traditional sensors.

We intend to use a portable system that can be deployed quickly in areas that may flood to give much needed advanced warning and monitor water levels during the time before the water recedes.

The project addresses the escalating ,worldwide and urgent need to evolve water management. We are not coping well with floods. For example the recent World Economic Forum ranked water risks third (flooding, drought and persistent pollutants) in the list of dangers to world economic activity. The Carbon Disclosure Project (ICCC) estimated that water impacts cost business over $2.5bn in 2015

During this project we will generate a large data set on water movement in two well defined geographical catchments. This will enable the water engineering community to develop, design, operate and maintain, optimum, multiple smaller scale upstream water retention schemes to reduce flooding. It is anticipated that the project will have far reaching ethical, environmental, educational and social benefits as well as improved economic resilience. The funds requested are for the EWIN project with Mexico but the data gathering is expected to be permanent providing a continuous resource for academic research. Ultimately wider adoption of the technology and their associated numerical models developed during the project are certain to be applicable to communities at flood risk globally.

These impacts will be achieved through the research into novel real time water sensing technology at the core of this proposal. The collection of hydrometric data (subtle changes in flow rate and water quality) has been impeded by the requirement of extensive resources for equipment and their maintenance. The availability of small, cheap and reliable sensors will allow a large number of monitors to be deployed and remotely. This will allow measurements of how river and water flows change with time, season and rainfall event. It will enable a better understanding of changes in channel morphology and sediment movement giving rise to the ability to make continual updates to the validation and sensitivity of existing hydraulic river models. Better real time predictions of the probability and location of flooding would be possible. Improvements in these models would also and more importantly enable optimum interventions with a range of storage and other small water hold up devices.

The consortium will share the expected IP resulting from the development of further novel non-invasive water quality sensors as variants to the existing patents.
The project team includes a partnership between Electrical and Civil Engineers and Environmental Scientists from academic, commercial and regulatory backgrounds which will generate environmental, commercial and societal experience, an ideal skill mix for the Global water challenges and growing employment sector ahead. Loughborough offers several Masters level programmes where these skills would make a direct contribution to the practical relevance of the courses. We would also seek to fund additional PhD students on the project funded by CASE or similar sponsored by our industrial partners. An outreach of the research will also be to promote education and general public understanding of the complex contributory factors to flooding events. There would be encouragement of the use and participation in the management of the water storage wetlands as nature reserves and sources of biodiversity. As part of this public involvement we would use our connections with local authorities, water utilities and the regulators to help prepare and maintain information for community based exhibitions and fairs as well as a web site to explain the basis of the work in an accessible way.