Real Time Water Level Monitoring for Early Warning System of Flash Floods Using Internet of Things (IoT)

Floods are a major challenge and the most common type of natural disaster, causing the loss of lives and properties, damage to critical infrastructure, economic loss and health related problems such as the outbreak of water borne diseases because of the high concentration of population in rivers, lakes, ponds, and reservoirs. Since most flash-flood casualties are caused by a lack of information, People who live in flood prone areas should know the height of the river water level early enough before flooding occurs. In this study, IoT based water level monitoring systems using ultrasonic sensors and ESP8266 NodeMcu V3 Board microcontroller that measures water level in real-time. The real-time data detected from the ultrasonic sensors will be sent to ThingSpeak IoT platform via the wireless connection and also can be monitored in through the internet cloud by the user view and explore on their mobile phones or personal computers. If the water level reaches the preset threshold value, the ESP8266 NodeMcu V3 Microcontroller triggers the alarm by activating buzzer with a flashing red LED. On the other hand, The action ThingHTTP of ThingSpeak IoT platform call Twilio, cloud communications API, to send SMS notification to the people in the community. This research paper also designed a system that monitoring the water level using wireless ultrasonic sensor network as early warning system of flash floods for the water bodies.