Initial Development of Buoy-based Early Warning Device for Flash Flood and Storm Surge Application

Flash flood is a naturally occurring calamity, espe-cially in tropical countries like the Philippines. The wreckage and grief caused by catastrophic typhoons emphasized the need for an Early Warning System (EWS) specifically for flash flood and storm surge applications. This study focuses on the development of an EWS enclosed in a buoy that will operate by floating along the highland rivers of flood-prone areas and sending notifications to disaster management authorities if a flash flood occurs. This system will be able to gather data from the behaviors of water just by observing the Euler angles - yaw (
$\lambda$
), roll (
$\theta$
), and pitch (ϕ) while partially submerged in the middle of a river. The main distinction between this EWS from other systems is that it is an off-grid circuit, can also be submerged in the ocean for storm surge applications, and will utilize an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor to monitor the water behavior. Experiments done for this study confirmed the buoy's waterproof capability not only in securing the integrity of its electrical components but also by gathering Euler angles as the basis of water flow characterization. The program's data yields a graphical representation of yaw, roll, and pitch angles if the water flow is normal, disturbed, and turbulent. Hence, this system is leaning towards low power consumption given that power saving modes like deep sleep mode will be applied to the system which means that using one mode compared with another mode will result in 13.46% better power use optimization. Meanwhile, tests conducted for this study are done in a flume simulator since we can't fully simulate a flash flood.