Flash Flood Early Warning System in Colima, Mexico

Abstract

This paper presents a system of sensors used in flash flood prediction that offers critical real-time information used to provide early warnings that can provide the minutes needed for persons to evacuate before imminent events. Flooding is one of the most serious natural disasters humans confront in terms of loss of life and results in long-term effects, which often have severely adverse social consequences. However, flash floods are potentially more dangerous to life because there is often little or no forewarning of the impending disaster. The Emergency Water Information Network (EWIN) offers a solution that integrates an early warning system, notifications, and real-time monitoring of flash flood risks. The platform has been implemented in Colima, Mexico covering the Colima and Villa de Alvarez metropolitan area. This platform consists of eight fixed riverside hydrological monitoring stations, eight meteorological stations, nomadic mobile monitoring stations called “drifters” used in the flow, and a sniffer with data muling capability. The results show that this platform effectively compiles and forwards information to decision-makers, government officials, and the general public, potentially providing valuable minutes for people to evacuate dangerous areas.

A Sustainable Early Warning System Using Rolling Forecasts Based on ANN and Golden Ratio Optimization Methods to Accurately Predict Real-Time Water Levels and Flash Flood

“…In order to minimize the risks caused by flash floods, early warning systems are required. To design a suitable early warning system, it is necessary to understand weather information, hazard monitoring and disaster risk assessment [ 13 , 16 , 17 ]. In this project, the EFWS integrates many subsystems (or elements) that include a real-time water level measurement system, a communication system, water flow and level estimation model based on the weather forecast data, forecasting flash flood model and hazard monitoring model as shown in Figure 1 .…”

“…The Yokohama Strategy and the Sendai Framework for risk assessment [ 13 , 20 ] introduce the significance of efficient EFWS in reducing disaster risk. In general, EFWS needs to generate meaningful and timely warnings to the government and communities before and during flood events.…”

“…In general, EFWS needs to generate meaningful and timely warnings to the government and communities before and during flood events. This is will help the government and communities to act safely and correctly to minimize the damages [ 13 , 20 ]. Therefore, it is important to develop an accurate flood forecast model based on the real-time water level measurements, and the estimation of water level rise, Δ L .…”

“…To the author’s knowledge, no studies have discussed the flash flood in the cities of Jordan. Although there is a high demand due to climate change for understanding flash floods in cities, and the discussions about strategies to handle floods in cities have been more significant [ 13 ], there is a lack of developing sustainable plans to face flash floods risk. A flash flood early warning system is an effective fundamental tool to minimize damages and loss due to floods.…”

“…EFWSs have been developed and implemented around the world with different structures. The basic composition of an EFWS that ensures high functionality was described and reviewed in [ 13 , 14 ]. However, the EFWS introduced in the literature focused on systems suitable for rivers and valley areas and does not present a system suitable for cities.…”