Nature can be unpredictable, however, there are certain symptoms that help scientists around the world to prevent the effects of the environment. Deciphering this behavior to be prepared for these eventualities is essential to avoid deaths and major material damage.
The flood experienced in Quito on January 31 highlights the need for technological tools that could warn of a disaster situation in time, thus avoiding human losses.
According to a magazine article CircleNatural disasters have quadrupled in the last forty years, quantifies the UN. Hurricanes, fires, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, extreme deforestation, avalanches are some of these events that have left around fifty thousand victims a year, according to a study by the Technological Institute of Karlsruhe, Germany. “Although nature’s impotent response to the effects of climate change seems unpredictable and uncontrollable, technology stands as a forceful ally,” the publication states.
Latin America is a region historically affected by this type of natural disaster. For example, in 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it rained in one day 10% of the historical accumulation of the year, generating great floods and destruction.
Technological solutions have allowed many cities to prepare to face the consequences of climate change and other natural phenomena with a high impact on their inhabitants.
An essential tool to prevent this type of situation are smart sensors, many of them installed in urban sewage systems. These devices measure the water level and predict damming, since they work with information that they have collected for a long time, and allow determining which are the correct indicators and when a change occurs.
In this way, the systems connected to the sensors alert the authorities and other important actors in real time, so that they can take immediate action to prevent flooding, divert traffic or even proceed with the evacuation of places at risk. .
Carlos Cruz, director of the SAP Solutions area, explains that, in general, cities that suffer severe flooding on a recurring basis do not have a mechanism for generating early warnings. “We still have a long way to go to ensure that disaster management mechanisms not only focus on the coordination efforts of rescue and relief organizations, but also integrate the analysis of information in a centralized and permanent manner in order to anticipate the occurrence of this type of event, by automatically alerting the authorities, with the fundamental objective of minimizing the impact on human loss, infrastructure and other material goods”.
In Europe, in the coastal mountain range of Collserola, one of the largest metropolitan parks in the world, located in Barcelona, is plagued by ‘intelligent dust’, that is, microchips with multiple sensors and infrared-emitting antennas capable of drawing a map of temperatures in the area. Any sudden rise is charged immediately. This way it can be brought under control quickly before it becomes a natural disaster.
Sensors placed on the seabed that communicate by means of acoustic signals with a buoy on the surface that receives the transmission work in a similar way. They are tsunami warning systems whose data is sent, in turn, to the different surveillance centers, which allows predicting when the phenomenon will reach the different countries that are affected by it.
In flood forecasting, the Wicast interface, by means of models and mathematical calculations, radar data and information collected from meteorological stations, offers exact information, in real time, as well as predictions, of the meteorological conditions, which allows anticipating the floods.
This is a system similar to the one used by the University of San Diego, in California, which calculates the amount of rain expected based on the temperature of the clouds and, in this way, knows in advance the distribution of precipitation.
For the flow of rivers, the Hidromet system obtains information on the course of the tributaries to know if it is necessary to remove vehicles from a certain area and when.
Real-time monitoring of floods uses data from sensors located at various sensitive points, such as reservoirs, dams, canals, and consolidates them, using technology platforms such as SAP 4/HANA to enable control and monitoring through a central dashboard that integrates the collected data and correlates it with geographic information of the areas at risk.
Automatic alert notifications are generated the moment thresholds defined for a normal condition condition are exceeded and predictive algorithms are used to forecast a flood situation based on parameters such as rainfall, water level and discharge levels .
From this perspective, it is necessary for cities to understand the value of technology and implement solutions that use real-time monitoring and data management in order to be prepared in the event of a possible catastrophic situation. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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