Design and development of a flood warning system via mobile and computer networks

Environmental data plays an important role in forecasting and warning of possible natural disaster such as flooding. Thailand faced a major flood in 2011, which at that time lacks automated mechanism in collecting environmental data and warning system. This work presents the design and development of a flood warning system. The system contains an embedded data acquisition module that can be placed in a remote area in order to collect environmental data such as amount of rainfall, water level, and image periodically. The collected data are then sent to a server over the Internet via a cellular data network, which are stored on a database and processed to determine early warning of flood in the area based on historical data. A web application and a mobile application have been designed and developed for users to view measured data. Moreover, the mobile application is capable of receiving a push notification of a warning message of potential flooding.