Sensor Grid Predicts Imminent Flooding

An anonymous reader writes, "NewScientistTech has an interesting story about a river sensor network that not only measures water depth and flow, but also forms a wireless computing grid to calculate possible flooding scenarios." From the article: "If the river's behavior starts to change, the network uses the data collected to run models and predict what will happen next. If a flood seems likely — because it is rapidly rising and moving quickly — the network can send a wireless warning containing the details... [A researcher said:] 'One end goal would be that people living in areas that flood can install these themselves. They are simple and robust enough to make that possible.'"

Comments

The yearly handouts must end

[Y-Crate]

Unfortunately, this will not affect the real problem, which is people continually rebuilding on extremely flood-prone land at taxpayer and insurance customer expense.

There is a difference between: "I'm building my house here, and there is a remote chance of a flood. Would you agree to help me out and spread out the risk?" and "Between me, my father and my grandfather we've rebuilt this house 4 times due to flooding. It's terrible. Give us more money to do it again."

I'm often accused of being a liberal, but the latter group deserve nothing from the government, and insurance companies should not be compelled to grant them policies. There has to be a "Sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense" threshold when it comes to these sorts of things. National Flood Insurance and private initiatives are a good safety net that I fully support, but they shouldn't be a replacement for common sense and responsibility.

.... EVERYBODY PANIC!!

[billstewart]

Oh, wait, this is Slashdot, not Fark. My bad....

Actually, some of this is really interesting technology. A few projects along these lines have been Motes and Smart Dust at Berkeley, and at least one of the groups named their project after the Larsen Localizers from Vernor Vinge's books even though getting that small is a ways out. Gumstix is a bit bigger, so there are a few more options and a bit less work on customization required compared to the smaller devices.

Overkill?

[Roger W Moore]

The river swale, also in the Yorkshire dales, used to have a water level up the dale at Muker which rang a bell in Richmond police station about 40 miles downstream so that the police could come out and clear the tourists picnicing on the river banks when there was a cloud burst up on the tops and the sun was still shining in Richmond and the river was about to rapidly rise.

Reading the article I wonder whether this vastly more complex system is really going to work when the river is in full flood and metre sized boulders are scouring out the river bed and banks. I've seen Bluetooth mice having trouble communicating in indoor conditions at a distance of 2 metres.

Still it is not all bad - at least the sheep will get to enjoy their own WiFi connection.

Wired article... and more on the Sensor Web

[Lord Satri]

...named Smart Sensors Find Floods.

On sensors, read this story on the OGC [Open Geospatial Consortium] specifications. If you look at this, you'll find more interesting stories on the Sensor Web, including the SensorMap from Microsoft Research and new RFID technology for instant forest fire alerts. (yes yes, this is mostly on-topic shameless plugs! ;-)