Development of a real-time monitoring system as a decision-support system for flood hazard mitigation

Abstract

This study proposes a real-time monitoring system to integrate the supportive flood-related information for hazard mitigation purposes. Through integrating photography, communication, geometric information display and network technology, this system can provide the real-time monitoring images at the critical gauge stations, inundation-prone areas and important hydraulic facilities during floods. With the development of mobile monitoring modules, the maneuverability of users and facilities could be significantly improved. Users can easily employ mobile phones to receive or report real-time flood-related information at any place and time. Furthermore, the water-level image recognition method is developed and applied to the selected monitoring stations for acquiring early warning of flood events. In final, an application scenario is given to illustrate how this system can greatly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency responses to flood hazard mitigation for the decision-makers.

Keywords:

• hazard mitigation
• decision support
• real-time monitoring
• image recognition

Acknowledgment

Financial support from the National Science Council, Taiwan, under grant NSC 98-2625-M-492-002 is highly appreciated. The authors are also grateful to the National Center for High-Performance Computing for computer time and facilities.