Sustainable Urban Flood Mitigation Using Smart Sensors and Autonomous Drainage Mechanism

Urban flooding remains a critical challenge, exacerbated by inadequate drainage systems and the lack of timely early warning mechanisms. This paper presents a sustainable urban flood mitigation system using smart sensors and an autonomous drainage mechanism to enhance flood preparedness and response in urban environments. The system utilizes an Arduino Uno microcontroller alongside a suite of sensors including ultrasonic, rain, temperature, and humidity sensors, combined with a servo motor, ESP8266 Wi-Fi module, traffic light LEDs, and buzzer alerts to enable real-time environmental monitoring and automated drainage cleaning. The rain sensor detects precipitation intensity, while two ultrasonic sensors respectively measure the water level and the garbage accumulation within the drainage bin. When threshold values are exceeded, the servo motor activates to transfer debris into a waste container, thereby reducing blockage risks. Data is continuously monitored and transmitted, providing live status updates and timely flood alerts to users. Model-based testing in simulated urban catchment conditions demonstrated the system's potential to reduce infrastructure damage and enhance community response to flood hazards by validating its detection, alerting, and autonomous cleaning capabilities under representative scenarios.