IOTFlood: hardware and software platform using internet of things to monitor floods in real time

Abstract Floods are responsible for a high number of human and material losses every year. Monitoring of river levels is usually performed with radar and pre-configured sensors. However, a major flood can occur quickly. This justifies the implementation of a real-time monitoring system. This work presents a hardware and software platform that uses Internet of Things (IoTFlood) to generate flood alerts to agencies responsible for monitoring by sending automatic messages about the situation of rivers. Research design involved laboratory and field scenarios, simulating floods using mockups, and later tested on the Mundaú River, state of Alagoas, Brazil, where flooding episodes have already occurred. As a result, a low-cost, modular and scalable IoT platform was achieved, where sensor data can be accessed through a web interface or smartphone, without the need for existing infrastructure at the site where the IOTFlood solution was installed using affordable hardware, open source software and free online services for the viewing of collected data.