The Implementation of an IoT-Based Flood Alert
System
Abstract—Floods are the most damaging natural disaster in
this world. On the occasion of heavy flood, it can destroy the
community and killed many lives. The government would spend
billions of dollars to recover the affected area. It is crucial to
develop a flood control system as a mechanism to reduce the
flood risk. Providing a quick feedback on the occurrence of the
flood is necessary for alerting resident to take early action such
as evacuate quickly to a safer and higher place. As a solution,
this paper propose a system that is not only able to detect the
water level but also able to measure the rise speed of water
level and alerted the resident. Waterfall model is adopted as the
methodology in this project. Raspberry Pi is used to collect data
from the water sensor and transmit the data to GSM module
for sending an alert via SMS. The analysis will be done to show
how the Raspberry Pi will be integrated with the smartphone to
give an alert. The system is tested in an experiments consist of
two different environment in order to ensure that the system is
able to provide accurate and reliable data. The project is an IoTbased
which significantly in line with the Industrial Revolution
4.0, supporting the infrastructure of Cyber-Physical System.
Keywords—Flood Alert System; Internet of Things; Cyber-
Physical System; IR4.0
I. INTRODUCTION
The worlds climate is changing drastically due to effect
from human activities such as pollutions, cut countless trees,
excessive gas emission etc. Floods are among the most common
damaging natural disasters, that cause significant harm
to life, property, and economy. Scientists estimate by 2030,
if 4-inch sea level rise, it could potentially caused the severe
flooding in many parts of the world [1].
Since Malaysia is located near the equator, the most
severe climatic related natural disasters are monsoonal flood.
It happens almost every year and causes a lot of damages,
property loss, and not to mention the loss of life during the
disaster. Recently in Jan 2018, two died and nearly 12,000
evacuated when flood strike in Pahang as reported in [2]. The
worst flood in Malaysian history happened in 2014. More than
200,000 people were affected while 21 were killed. The major
disasters happened in the several states on the east coast side
of Peninsular Malaysia. The estimated cost of damages was
over RM1 billion as reported in [3]. The impact of the flood
is huge and it is not happening in Malaysia but all over the
world.
This paper proposes a flood warning system that can detect
the water level and measure the speed of the rise of water
level. To give the society an earlier notification to evacuate
before the water rises to the dangerous level, the measurement
result is sent as the alert to a mobile phone through Short
Message Service (SMS). This project is designed on the IoTbased
platform, where data from the sensor is collected at the
mini-processor and alert is generated and transmitted as SMS
to a smartphone. The proposed system is implemented in an
experimental setting in two different environment to test its
effectiveness.
Section 2 explains some works that have been conducted
in the related field. Section 3 presents the methodology used
in developing the system that the Waterfall model. Section
4 analyzes the result of the experiment and discusses them
accordingly. Section 5 concludes the paper with an outline of
contribution and the future work.
II. RELATED WORKS
Some article such as [4] and [5] has reviewed on flood
disaster and disaster management in Malaysia which highlight
the importance of finding best remedies to prepare if disaster
strikes. Futhermore, Leman et al. [5] also reviewed the current
disaster management in Malaysia for proposing enhancement
the effectiveness. They suggest four phases of action; preparedness,
response, recovery and mitigation. Due to this phenomenon,
several experts have studied over the years on ways
to improve flood control, thereby reducing the aforementioned
risks. Better understanding of the flood hazard phenomenon
and its potential consequences in our society is crucial for the
development of flood risk reduction projects, control policies
and other types of flood management strategies. The adoption
of IoT based-system has attract attention among researchers
since data is collectively sensed by sensors to provide various
services without human intervention [6]. Early work by Lo et
al. [7] propose to automatically monitor the flood object based
on the remote cyber surveillance systems. Image processing
methods are being utilized to obtain instant flooding and
waterlogging event feedback.
www.ijacsa.thesai.org 620 j P a g e
(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. 9, No. 11, 2018
On the other hand, [8] used pressure sensor to read the
water level at every second, for detecting the level of water.
In the occasion where the water level surpasses a user-defined
threshold, an SMS is texted to the residence for warning and
quick action. Recent from Jana Priya et al. [9] and Satria et
al. [10] demonstrate the idea and implementation of a flood
monitoring and alert system using measuring sensor. They
proposed a system that measures the height of the water
using ultrasonic sensor. While, [11] combine ultrasonic and
water level sensor to monitor flood level conditions however
it missing alert system.
Inspired by the literature, this work aimed to detect flood
with water sensor with different level of measurement with
SMS alert. SMS is considered as the most effective way to
the scenario Malaysia since smartphone has rapidly become
the preferred device for most Malaysian to remain connected.
According to the survey [12], the percentage of smartphone
users continue to rise from 68.7% in 2016 to 75.9% in 2017.
The increment trend shows that the majority of people in
Malaysia use mobile phones and it is a good strategy to give an
early warning to the society using an SMS via mobile phone.
III. METHODOLOGY
Waterfall Model is flows steadily downwards (like a waterfall)
through the seven phases; comprises of Planning, Requirement,
Design, Implementation, Testing, Maintenance and
Documentation. The following are the details of each phase
for starting with the backgroup study until the completion of
project.
A. Requirement
The first phase is to study the requirement to explore the
research area including background study and also related
works. From there, the research gap is identified and proceed
to identify the hardware and software requirement. Hardwares
that involved are water sensor, SEN113104 model and GSM
module (model is a USB 3G modem Huawei mobile broadband
E173). A breadboard is used to place and set up all the
equipment at one proper place, Resistor 10K to reduce the
current that flow of the system and also many types of jumper
cables to connect the water sensor, raspberry pi and GSM
module. The software used is a python language to code the
entire program.
B. Design
The design phase presented the system design as presented
in Fig. 1. There are two sensors used which placed at two
different height. The first one will be placed at a lower level.
This is the level of the potential flood that will be anticipated.
When the water reaches this level, it triggers the water sensor
and data is transmitted to Raspberry Pi and pass to GSM
module for generating SMS alert to the residents, as a warning
to be cautious and prepared. If the water continues to rise
and reaches the second water sensor, it is considered now as
dangerous, an alert SMS once again sent to the resident and
authorities.
Fig. 1. Flood Alert System Design
C. Implementation
In this phase, Raspberry Pi, water sensors and GSM
Module are already being installed and developed based on
the design. All the wiring that needs to be installed on the
breadboard will be installed. Also, the coding for the Raspberry
Pi will be set up in this phase for the water sensor and GSM
module. This phase will take a lot of time because there will be
many errors and unexpected problems that may occur during
the configuration and development of the system. Verification
and testing of the system also need to be done in this phase.
The experiment has been set up as such a basin is placed
with the two water sensors where the sensor will be placed
on a certain height. Then, the sensor will be connected to the
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi is connected to a Huawei
mobile broadband so that it can send an alert message to the
user.
This project is tested actual water where the water sensor
will be placed in a basin (see Figs. 2). Then, when the water
rises and reaches to the first sensor, automatically it will send
an alert message to the authorized user or the head of society
to inform about the water rise. Later, when the water reaches
the second sensor which is much more higher than the first
one, an alert message will be sent to inform that the water is
now at a dangerous level, and also it will calculate the time for
the water to reach the second sensor with the speed of water
rising too.
D. Verification
In this phase, the SMS based flood early warning system
using Raspberry Pi is tested to ensure if the system could
send the early warning. The sensor will also be tested to see
whether the detection of the liquid is okay or not. GSM Module
should be checked to see whether it can give an SMS as an
alert to the mobile phone. This phase is an important phase
because it really needs to verify and test the system before it
can be implemented. The performance of the system is tested
as discussed in Section 3
E. Maintenance
The maintenance phase is to ensure that the sensor continue
working to capture data anytime when water is rising. It is also
important to ensure the GSM Module is ready to send SMS
alert when needed. Maintenance is needed to be performed
www.ijacsa.thesai.org 621 j P a g e
(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. 9, No. 11, 2018
Fig. 2. The prototype of system and experiment set up
from time to time so that, if there any error or malfunction to
this system, an appropriate action will be taken. The system
needs to always update any new software or any efficient code
so that the system is at the top of the performance. This phase
is the important part because it will determine the performance
and how long will the system withstand.
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Overall, the system able to send an alert via SMS when
the water rises to the pre-determined level. A quick notification
through SMS is vital since the system is aimed at
alerting people and authorities. Therefore, time delay is used
for performance testing and evaluation. Three testings are as
shown in Table 1. Entire testing is carried out in a controlled
environment where two assumptions made; in the occasion of
the water level rise fast or slow; emulating the condition of
flash flood and monsoon flood respectively.
TABLE I. PERFORMANCE TESTING SCHEDULED
Test Environment Performance Testing
Test 1 Test 2 Test 3
A - Full Volume Flow
Rate
delay time
of water
detection
by the two
sensors
delay time between
sent and
received messages
delay time
of sent water
speed
B - Half Volume Flow
Rate
For fast water risen, Full Volume Flow Rate environment is
used where the water tab is open at its full speed (Environment
A). Meanwhile, Half Volume Flow Rate (Environment B) is
set with the water tab is open at half of it so that the water
rises slowly. Table 1 summarized the test environment and the
performance testing.
A. Test 1 Water Detection
Test 1 is designed to measure the accuracy of time
measured by the system which compared with the manual
time reading. For each environment, 30 series of reading are
captured manually by digital clock and automatically from
system time (produced by the system). Since 30 lines of time
are quite long, Table II and III only shown the partial result
obtained for Environment A and B respectively. The time of
water detection at sensor 1 and sensor 2 by the system is
compared with the manual reading.
It is not much difference between the manual and system
time. For both environment, although some readings are different,
on average the difference is not more than 10 seconds.
This is expected since the program need some time to acquire
data from sensor and pass it to the system. The result appears
to verify that the system time is accurate.
TABLE II. RESULT OF TEST 1 FOR ENVIRONMENT A
Sensor 1 Sensor 2
Manual System Time Difference
(s)
Manual System Time Difference
(s)
11:45:53 11:45:53 0:00:00 11:16:03 11:16:06 0:00:03
11:23:43 11:23:43 0:00:00 11:24:59 11:24:59 0:00:00
11:30:51 11:30:52 0:00:01 11:32:03 11:32:03 0:00:00
11:36:17 11:36:18 0:00:01 11:37:27 11:37:28 0:00:01
11:41:51 11:41:51 0:00:00 11:43:02 11:43:02 0:00:00
...
...
...
...
...
...
2:07:33 2:07:35 0:00:02 2:08:43 2:08:47 0:00:04
Minimum 0:00:00 Minimum 0:00:00
Maximum 0:00:02 Maximum 0:00:08
Average 0:00:09 Average 0:00:02
B. Test 2 Delay Time of Received SMS
This test aimed to measure the delay of received SMS
System
Abstract—Floods are the most damaging natural disaster in
this world. On the occasion of heavy flood, it can destroy the
community and killed many lives. The government would spend
billions of dollars to recover the affected area. It is crucial to
develop a flood control system as a mechanism to reduce the
flood risk. Providing a quick feedback on the occurrence of the
flood is necessary for alerting resident to take early action such
as evacuate quickly to a safer and higher place. As a solution,
this paper propose a system that is not only able to detect the
water level but also able to measure the rise speed of water
level and alerted the resident. Waterfall model is adopted as the
methodology in this project. Raspberry Pi is used to collect data
from the water sensor and transmit the data to GSM module
for sending an alert via SMS. The analysis will be done to show
how the Raspberry Pi will be integrated with the smartphone to
give an alert. The system is tested in an experiments consist of
two different environment in order to ensure that the system is
able to provide accurate and reliable data. The project is an IoTbased
which significantly in line with the Industrial Revolution
4.0, supporting the infrastructure of Cyber-Physical System.
Keywords—Flood Alert System; Internet of Things; Cyber-
Physical System; IR4.0
I. INTRODUCTION
The worlds climate is changing drastically due to effect
from human activities such as pollutions, cut countless trees,
excessive gas emission etc. Floods are among the most common
damaging natural disasters, that cause significant harm
to life, property, and economy. Scientists estimate by 2030,
if 4-inch sea level rise, it could potentially caused the severe
flooding in many parts of the world [1].
Since Malaysia is located near the equator, the most
severe climatic related natural disasters are monsoonal flood.
It happens almost every year and causes a lot of damages,
property loss, and not to mention the loss of life during the
disaster. Recently in Jan 2018, two died and nearly 12,000
evacuated when flood strike in Pahang as reported in [2]. The
worst flood in Malaysian history happened in 2014. More than
200,000 people were affected while 21 were killed. The major
disasters happened in the several states on the east coast side
of Peninsular Malaysia. The estimated cost of damages was
over RM1 billion as reported in [3]. The impact of the flood
is huge and it is not happening in Malaysia but all over the
world.
This paper proposes a flood warning system that can detect
the water level and measure the speed of the rise of water
level. To give the society an earlier notification to evacuate
before the water rises to the dangerous level, the measurement
result is sent as the alert to a mobile phone through Short
Message Service (SMS). This project is designed on the IoTbased
platform, where data from the sensor is collected at the
mini-processor and alert is generated and transmitted as SMS
to a smartphone. The proposed system is implemented in an
experimental setting in two different environment to test its
effectiveness.
Section 2 explains some works that have been conducted
in the related field. Section 3 presents the methodology used
in developing the system that the Waterfall model. Section
4 analyzes the result of the experiment and discusses them
accordingly. Section 5 concludes the paper with an outline of
contribution and the future work.
II. RELATED WORKS
Some article such as [4] and [5] has reviewed on flood
disaster and disaster management in Malaysia which highlight
the importance of finding best remedies to prepare if disaster
strikes. Futhermore, Leman et al. [5] also reviewed the current
disaster management in Malaysia for proposing enhancement
the effectiveness. They suggest four phases of action; preparedness,
response, recovery and mitigation. Due to this phenomenon,
several experts have studied over the years on ways
to improve flood control, thereby reducing the aforementioned
risks. Better understanding of the flood hazard phenomenon
and its potential consequences in our society is crucial for the
development of flood risk reduction projects, control policies
and other types of flood management strategies. The adoption
of IoT based-system has attract attention among researchers
since data is collectively sensed by sensors to provide various
services without human intervention [6]. Early work by Lo et
al. [7] propose to automatically monitor the flood object based
on the remote cyber surveillance systems. Image processing
methods are being utilized to obtain instant flooding and
waterlogging event feedback.
www.ijacsa.thesai.org 620 j P a g e
(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. 9, No. 11, 2018
On the other hand, [8] used pressure sensor to read the
water level at every second, for detecting the level of water.
In the occasion where the water level surpasses a user-defined
threshold, an SMS is texted to the residence for warning and
quick action. Recent from Jana Priya et al. [9] and Satria et
al. [10] demonstrate the idea and implementation of a flood
monitoring and alert system using measuring sensor. They
proposed a system that measures the height of the water
using ultrasonic sensor. While, [11] combine ultrasonic and
water level sensor to monitor flood level conditions however
it missing alert system.
Inspired by the literature, this work aimed to detect flood
with water sensor with different level of measurement with
SMS alert. SMS is considered as the most effective way to
the scenario Malaysia since smartphone has rapidly become
the preferred device for most Malaysian to remain connected.
According to the survey [12], the percentage of smartphone
users continue to rise from 68.7% in 2016 to 75.9% in 2017.
The increment trend shows that the majority of people in
Malaysia use mobile phones and it is a good strategy to give an
early warning to the society using an SMS via mobile phone.
III. METHODOLOGY
Waterfall Model is flows steadily downwards (like a waterfall)
through the seven phases; comprises of Planning, Requirement,
Design, Implementation, Testing, Maintenance and
Documentation. The following are the details of each phase
for starting with the backgroup study until the completion of
project.
A. Requirement
The first phase is to study the requirement to explore the
research area including background study and also related
works. From there, the research gap is identified and proceed
to identify the hardware and software requirement. Hardwares
that involved are water sensor, SEN113104 model and GSM
module (model is a USB 3G modem Huawei mobile broadband
E173). A breadboard is used to place and set up all the
equipment at one proper place, Resistor 10K to reduce the
current that flow of the system and also many types of jumper
cables to connect the water sensor, raspberry pi and GSM
module. The software used is a python language to code the
entire program.
B. Design
The design phase presented the system design as presented
in Fig. 1. There are two sensors used which placed at two
different height. The first one will be placed at a lower level.
This is the level of the potential flood that will be anticipated.
When the water reaches this level, it triggers the water sensor
and data is transmitted to Raspberry Pi and pass to GSM
module for generating SMS alert to the residents, as a warning
to be cautious and prepared. If the water continues to rise
and reaches the second water sensor, it is considered now as
dangerous, an alert SMS once again sent to the resident and
authorities.
Fig. 1. Flood Alert System Design
C. Implementation
In this phase, Raspberry Pi, water sensors and GSM
Module are already being installed and developed based on
the design. All the wiring that needs to be installed on the
breadboard will be installed. Also, the coding for the Raspberry
Pi will be set up in this phase for the water sensor and GSM
module. This phase will take a lot of time because there will be
many errors and unexpected problems that may occur during
the configuration and development of the system. Verification
and testing of the system also need to be done in this phase.
The experiment has been set up as such a basin is placed
with the two water sensors where the sensor will be placed
on a certain height. Then, the sensor will be connected to the
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi is connected to a Huawei
mobile broadband so that it can send an alert message to the
user.
This project is tested actual water where the water sensor
will be placed in a basin (see Figs. 2). Then, when the water
rises and reaches to the first sensor, automatically it will send
an alert message to the authorized user or the head of society
to inform about the water rise. Later, when the water reaches
the second sensor which is much more higher than the first
one, an alert message will be sent to inform that the water is
now at a dangerous level, and also it will calculate the time for
the water to reach the second sensor with the speed of water
rising too.
D. Verification
In this phase, the SMS based flood early warning system
using Raspberry Pi is tested to ensure if the system could
send the early warning. The sensor will also be tested to see
whether the detection of the liquid is okay or not. GSM Module
should be checked to see whether it can give an SMS as an
alert to the mobile phone. This phase is an important phase
because it really needs to verify and test the system before it
can be implemented. The performance of the system is tested
as discussed in Section 3
E. Maintenance
The maintenance phase is to ensure that the sensor continue
working to capture data anytime when water is rising. It is also
important to ensure the GSM Module is ready to send SMS
alert when needed. Maintenance is needed to be performed
www.ijacsa.thesai.org 621 j P a g e
(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. 9, No. 11, 2018
Fig. 2. The prototype of system and experiment set up
from time to time so that, if there any error or malfunction to
this system, an appropriate action will be taken. The system
needs to always update any new software or any efficient code
so that the system is at the top of the performance. This phase
is the important part because it will determine the performance
and how long will the system withstand.
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Overall, the system able to send an alert via SMS when
the water rises to the pre-determined level. A quick notification
through SMS is vital since the system is aimed at
alerting people and authorities. Therefore, time delay is used
for performance testing and evaluation. Three testings are as
shown in Table 1. Entire testing is carried out in a controlled
environment where two assumptions made; in the occasion of
the water level rise fast or slow; emulating the condition of
flash flood and monsoon flood respectively.
TABLE I. PERFORMANCE TESTING SCHEDULED
Test Environment Performance Testing
Test 1 Test 2 Test 3
A - Full Volume Flow
Rate
delay time
of water
detection
by the two
sensors
delay time between
sent and
received messages
delay time
of sent water
speed
B - Half Volume Flow
Rate
For fast water risen, Full Volume Flow Rate environment is
used where the water tab is open at its full speed (Environment
A). Meanwhile, Half Volume Flow Rate (Environment B) is
set with the water tab is open at half of it so that the water
rises slowly. Table 1 summarized the test environment and the
performance testing.
A. Test 1 Water Detection
Test 1 is designed to measure the accuracy of time
measured by the system which compared with the manual
time reading. For each environment, 30 series of reading are
captured manually by digital clock and automatically from
system time (produced by the system). Since 30 lines of time
are quite long, Table II and III only shown the partial result
obtained for Environment A and B respectively. The time of
water detection at sensor 1 and sensor 2 by the system is
compared with the manual reading.
It is not much difference between the manual and system
time. For both environment, although some readings are different,
on average the difference is not more than 10 seconds.
This is expected since the program need some time to acquire
data from sensor and pass it to the system. The result appears
to verify that the system time is accurate.
TABLE II. RESULT OF TEST 1 FOR ENVIRONMENT A
Sensor 1 Sensor 2
Manual System Time Difference
(s)
Manual System Time Difference
(s)
11:45:53 11:45:53 0:00:00 11:16:03 11:16:06 0:00:03
11:23:43 11:23:43 0:00:00 11:24:59 11:24:59 0:00:00
11:30:51 11:30:52 0:00:01 11:32:03 11:32:03 0:00:00
11:36:17 11:36:18 0:00:01 11:37:27 11:37:28 0:00:01
11:41:51 11:41:51 0:00:00 11:43:02 11:43:02 0:00:00
...
...
...
...
...
...
2:07:33 2:07:35 0:00:02 2:08:43 2:08:47 0:00:04
Minimum 0:00:00 Minimum 0:00:00
Maximum 0:00:02 Maximum 0:00:08
Average 0:00:09 Average 0:00:02
B. Test 2 Delay Time of Received SMS
This test aimed to measure the delay of received SMS
No comments:
Post a Comment