Advance flood detection and notification system based on sensor technology and machine learning algorithm

Abstract

Floods are common natural disasters that cause severe devastation of any country. They are commonly caused by precipitation and runoff of rivers, particularly during periods of excessively high rainy season. Due to global warming issues and extreme environmental effects, flood has become a serious problem to the extent of bringing about negative impact to the mankind and infrastructure. To date, sensor network technology has been used in many areas including water level fluctuation. However, efficient flood monitoring and real time notification system still a crucial part because Information Technology enabled applications have not been employed in this sector in a broad way. This research presents a description of an alert generating system for flood detection with a focus on determining the current water level using sensors technology. The system then provides notification message about water level sensitivity via Global Communication and Mobile System modem to particular authorise person. Besides the Short Message Service, the system instantaneously uploads and broadcast information through web base public network. Machine-learning algorithms were conducted to perform the classification process. Four experiments were carried out to classify flood data from normal and at risk condition in which 99.5% classification accuracy was achieved using Random Forest algorithm. Classification using Bagging, Decision Tree and HyperPipes algorithms achieved accuracy of 97.7 %, 94.6% and 89.8 %, respectively.