Flood Detection using Sensor Network and Notification via SMS and Public Network

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Flood Detection using Sensor Network and Notification via SMS and Public Network"

Bryan Hall
6 years ago
Views:

1 Flood Detection using Sensor Network and Notification via SMS and Public Network Mohamed Ibrahim Khalaf alfahadiwy College of Information Technology Universiti Tenaga Nasional Al-anaber, Iraq Abstract This paper presents a description of an alert generating system for flood detection. This paper focused on the development of the system which will determine the current water level by means of sensors and by using wireless sensor network will then provide notification via GSM modem. The system however do not just stops there but proceed to also send notification through popular social network like the Facebook and Twitters. It is felt that notification system such as flood warning system should be carried a step further in notifying the public. Since social networking is at the moment one of the popular medium of communication, sending an alert through it would hence reach a larger audience. A prototype of the proposed system is discussed in this paper and the result of the testing phase is also elaborated. The architecture of the system can be expanded further to a fully functioning system in alerting the public of an impending disaster caused by flood. Keywords: flood detection system, wireless sensor network, microcontroller, radio frequency, GSM. I. INTRODUCTION Floods are among the most common disasters and natural hazard in the world, affecting human lives and causing severe economic damage. It is understood that flood risks will not decrease in the future and with the beginning of climate change, flood intensity and frequency will threaten many regions of the world [1]. To minimize the extent of damages caused by flood, warning systems to inform the people of the disaster should be implemented in high risk areas. This system will be able to reduce the damages of flood. The system should be designed to be able to detect the rising levels of water so appropriate warnings to the authorities and the public can be send. In general, such a flood notification Azizah suliman College of information technology, department system and network Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN) Malaysia, Selangor Azizah@uniten.edu.my system components will consist of microcontrollers, sensors, modem and computers. A wireless sensor network (WSN) has several features like a group of low cost, multifunctional, low power and small size wireless sensor nodes that cooperate together to sense the environment, process the data and communicate wirelessly over a short distance. The sensors are commonly used to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, water level, pressure, motion or pollutants, at areas of interest. In this project, we used water level sensor for monitoring and detection in disaster areas. [2]. Wireless telecommunications, is the transfer of information between two or more points that are physically not connected. Distances can be short or long according to the capability of the device. There are two types of wireless device which have been chosen to send the signal from high risk flood area to the common people. The first device is Global System for Mobile Communications(GSM) supports roaming service to the people around the world that allows a user of GSM network send a short message service (SMS) to the receive mobile telephony service when the person communication with network. the second device which used to send the signal wirelessly from area flood to the flood control center is Radio frequency (RF). Radio frequency is one of the varieties of electromagnetic waves with a frequency or wavelength convenient for utilization in radio communication. There are two kinds of frequency that applied in radio communication, which are carrier frequency and modulated frequency. The duty of carrier frequency waves is serving as a carrier of the lower frequency audio waves and others are modulated by two things video or digital information.[3] Nowadays, the technology which has been used for flood detection system is much more precise than the devices of the last decade. Unfortunately, there are still some lack in the significant of an early warning system is difficult to alert the whole people in the area. Consequently, we are developing the system which is suitable to give continuous alert information to the people by

2 SMS and social network especially at the critical situation. the majority of people who lost their lives by flood are not received any alert from the flood control center about the increasing water level caused by continuous rainfall and overflow of river A. PROBLEM STATEMENT Figure 1. Aftermath of flood in Pakistan 2010 Lives had been lost because of flood. Flood may happen anytime during the four season and at any area around the world. Table 1 showed and estimate that the Damage of flood which Caused by Three Recent Disasters in The results which have been received about flood disaster encourage us to find the best solution for the natural hazard. A detection and notification system for flood is hence proposed as a measure to lessen the risk of damages caused by flood to life and property as showed in Figure 1. This system will be a good opportunity in making the operation more efficient and synchronize. From last decade, there are many variety of systems have been produce to prevent this problem from happen again. Therefore, new system need to invented and applicable fro any time and any area to solve this problem effectively by using best technology that using in world currently, and the system should be simple and useful. This system can inform the people before a lot of benefit to the people which can be able to safe their live and properties. B. IMPACT OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK AND WEB PORTALS In the last few years, the Internet and especially the Web has prompted and enabled a revolution on how people communicate. Web portals, provide efficient access to information and services online and they provide a central concentrated focal point and an information source that can be personalized. There are many types of portal and one of them is community portal. Community portals provide improved communication and contact with a community online providing local or community based information. Social networking portals are now the recent trend. In a social networking site (SNS), members join the various communities and create a user profile in the site and can connect to one another within the community. Some example of how huge the following of social networks are : the social networking site MySpace which ranks sixth in overall web traffic, with over 47 million unique US visitors each month (Dwyer et.al., 2007). The web traffic data for Facebook, a social networking site oriented towards college students, shows 15 million unique US visitors a month (Dwyer et.al., 2007). These data are of 2007 and the followers of these and other social sites are at the moment still on the increase especially in places outside the US. Communities can be better informed more quickly through online social networking. For these reasons it is felt the social network and community portal should also be used for alert systems like the flood detection and notification system so a larger group can be warn of the impending danger. The flood control center should have a web portal and a social network with group of people in the areas where flood is one of the risks. TABLE I: Comparison of Damage Caused by Three Recent Disasters Incident Number of deaths Estimated financial loss The cost of rebuilding roads Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, Pakistan (August 2010) the southern coast of China, China (October 2010) Southern city, Thailand ( Nov 2010) The worst floods in Pakistan's history have hit at least 14 million people killing at least 31 people, with 23 people missing. and 100,000 people to leave their homes over the weekend, Heavy flooding has already killed more than 100 people around the country there was put at some 5bn Pakistani rupees ($59m, 38m), also, 1.4m acres (557,000 hectares) and more than 10,000 cows have perished. 75 million dollars 1.6 billion dollars

II. RELATED WORK Previous work covers a wide variety of topics including flood detection system in some developing countries like Canada, Australia and USA Many researchers have been developed flood

Flood detection system alert In order to construct flood detection system that is useful and efficient by using GSM.

3 II. RELATED WORK Previous work covers a wide variety of topics including flood detection system in some developing countries like Canada, Australia and USA Many researchers have been developed flood detection system in various ways, some of the types are based on GSM, early warning system for flood, satellite and MC68HC11 Microcontroller. A. Flood detection system alert In order to construct flood detection system that is useful and efficient by using GSM. Aziz et al [4] proposed architecture for an early warning flood system to alert public against flood disaster. The research work proposed an architecture for a cooperative flood detection using GSM via SMS in order to notify communities and hence to develop a prototype application of the system. The system focuses on monitoring water level remotely using wireless sensor network. Also, utilizes Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) and Short Message Service (SMS) to relay data from sensors to computers or directly alert the respective victim s through their mobile phone. Subramaniam et al used Flood Observatory System (FOS) as a warning and alert system, to efficiently monitor the critical flood prone areas in real time basis. FOS is designed to be an intelligent gadget which is capable of sending real time water level information from a remote location to a monitoring station which could be at a distance away, regardless of time. FOS can be linked to a visual and audio unit to display warnings and alerts the users via text displays or traffic light system in an event of flooding.[5] Martinis presented an automatic near-real time (NRT) flood detection system which combines histogram thresholding and segmentation based classification, specifically oriented to the analysis of single-polarized very high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data. The challenge of SARbased flood detection is addressed in a completely unsupervised way, which assumes no training data and therefore no prior information about the class statistics to be available concerning the area of investigation.[6] This is usually the case in NRT-disaster management, where the collection of ground truth information is not feasible due to time-constraints. Zain et al. are proposed the development of flood detector system which will determine the current water level that is assumed from the voltage from the detector. The data that has been collected will be analyzed in database to make sure the safety purpose been taken if the water reach to warning level. This project consists of three parts which the first part involved the development of the system that is capable to detect water level.[7] The second part is the development of the system that can process the value that has been collected to the water deepness level. The third part is about the system that will modulate the signal that has been collected from the process system in second part and it will transmit the modulated signal through the antenna. The signal from the third part will be received by the receiver part to be displayed on the display segment. III. SYSTEM DESIGN AND DESCRIPTION Flood detecting notification by using wireless sensor network is to detect the flood in advance way. In this system, two significant things include hardware design and software development. The hardware part is very important for thesystem that can be able to control the whole system and the transmitter and receiver Module that use in the wireless purpose for send and receive the signal. Flood detection system is containing five main components: Water level sensor PIC16F877A Radio frequency Global system communication mobile(gsm) Figure 2. Block diagram shown the process of signal A. Water Level Sensor Water level sensor is consider one of the important devices which has been used in the project because from this device can be recognized the current level of water. The function of this sensor is detecting the rising of water. When the water is rising up will send the signal to the PIC. in this situation needs to accurate sensor to give information to the whole people in the area about level of water. The type of sensors which has been selected for this project is F11B (Model Number). This sensor is base on NAND Gate. The most significant of this sensor are small size, inexpensive, easy to use and available in the market. Figure 3. Water level sensor connect PIC

4 These three sensors are connecting directly to PIC, which is able to detect the level of water. When the water in the low level the led will off and a message will be displayed in the HyperTerminal, the water is normal, and when the water is very high, the led and buzzer will on and display message in the HyperTerminal the water is very dangerous. B. Peripheral interface controller (PIC) Peripheral interface controller (PIC) is considere the main components used in the system. All the code which has been programmed by C language is installed inside PIC. The type of PIC that used in this project is PIC16F877A. Additionally, PIC16F877A consider the main control of this system and has the ability to identify the functions of the system through software that is installed inside. One of the functions of PIC will receive the signal from the tree sensors and it will process the data to know about the current level of water. The data which has been processed will display at computer personal (PC) as the output. A. Radio frequency Radio frequency (RF) is one of the varieties of electromagnetic waves with a frequency or wavelength convenient for utilization in radio communication. There are two kinds of frequency that applied in radio communication, which are carrier frequency and modulated frequency. a. Transmission medium The duty of Transmission medium to send the signal from sensor part to the flood control center part as shown in the figure fig 3.2. The Transmission medium that used in this system must be connect to the encoder to make sure the data is directly transmitted to the receiver. The function of encoder is to change a signal or data into a code. The Decoder will only receive the data from the encoder when its address is similar to the address of encoder. When the information is sent through RB0-RB3, the same information is received by decoder. Thus, it can be conclude that the encoder and decoder are fully functioning. [7]. b. Receiver module The general concept for receiver is the receiving end of a communication channel. The function of receiver is receives decoded messages or information from the sender, who first encoded them. Sometimes the receiver is modeled to include the decoder. As shown in the figure 3.2 the receiver module is located at the receiver part to receive the data from transmission part then, send to the PIC directly to processes it and display the data on PC. Receiver module is installed at RA0-RA3 in the PIC. D. Global System For mobile Communication Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a wireless digital network standard designed by standardization committees from the major European telecommunications operators and manufacturers. The GSM standard provides a common set of compatible services and capabilities to all mobile users across Europe and several million customers worldwide. GSM supports roaming service that allows a user of GSM network A to receive mobile telephony service when the person visits a different GSM network B. If both GSM networks A and B are within the same country, call setup for a roamer can be done efficiently.[8]. In the table 2 we have shown the comparison among wireless technology and why we are using GSM instead other types. A. Application of GSM/3G SMS/ Bluetooth technology TABLE II Comparison among wireless technologies which currently using in the world. GSM Blueto oth 3G Range The range of GSM is very wide that can cover all the world The maximum range of Bluetooth is 10 meters (~30ft). There is Some high powered devices extend range up to 100 meters in special case.[9] The range is limited and depend on many variable Data rate kbps( kilobit s per secon d) 700 Kbps (kilob its per secon d) 2 Mbps (mega bits per secon d) Benefits 1. Mobility 2. Easy availability 3. High uptime 1. Wireless 2.Standardized protocol 3. Low consumption of energy 4.Interconnecti vity 1.Alwaysonline services 2.Fast download or receiving of large files such as faxes, videos and PowerPoint files Media This device is suitable for using and the cost is quite low This kind of technology is need to spend money just need access point from the distance place The cost of send a file text through this technology is need too much memory compare with GSM

5 IV. SOFTWARE The second part of this project is software. This part control all the system by the code, which has been programmed the PIC. Since the project is based on PIC, the development of software plays a major role in develop the system. A PCW language is used in this project. The program is written modularly to list the module functionality. Each program is written and assembled and then stored into EPROM using EPROM Programmer (EP). Additionally, in this project would be using Ozeki Message Server as a SMS gateway application that able to send SMS from website to the mobile by GSM modem. In the GSM modem will insert Subscriber Identity Module(SIM card) to send alert messages for the controller that resides in computer when he is not present at flood control center. Table III: Comparison between current technology Used in Disaster alert.[10] channel Advantage Challenges Short message Reliable, low-cost 1. The most challenge service (SMS) communication mechanism in this channel when for concise information since the majority of people have the local people don t use mobile service. their mobile phones at arm s 2. The language reach 24 hours a day is very easy send the message very problem to the foreign people. quickly to all the people service The best feature of Mail is delivered instantly. From the flood office can send message to anywhere in The world. Additionally less expensive compare with others like mobile, fax..etc. This channel is not widespread and need from user to check the news every moment. V. RESULTSD AND DISCUSSION The main objective we have gained from this system is able to spread the news quickly during flood disaster to the general public by using SMS and social network like Facebook and Twitter. The main reason we select face book and twitter because majority of people nowadays using these applications to communicate. A. Architecture of flood detection system flood can happen in any time, and when flood hazards happens and the level of water increasing rapidly, the sensor will record the levels of water and the data are send to the flood controller system. In the prototype model of the system, it contains three sensors. As shows in figure 4 First sensor is to detect the low level and a message Normal water level will be send out. The second sensor detects the medium level of water with a message Dangerous Level. The last one will detect the high level of water with a message Very dangerous, evacuation is needed which inform the people the dangers situation of flood. In this system, we are using two techniques to send the data via SMS to the controller and the public. The first technique; we are using GSM for sending the information to the controller at flood control center only. The second technique will send the information to the mobile company, which has ability to spread the information to whole people who live in the area flood. Additionally, all the information, which has been received at flood control center, will upload to the website to send notification through popular social network like the Facebook and Twitters. This system is using C language to program PIC. Radio and Television Television and radio have revolutionized mass communication. This mass is widespread in the world currently. The main obstacle of this communication is not work at night because is usually switch off and the people is sleep Home Telephone and mobile Messages delivered quickly. furthermore can get all sort of information and news about the disaster Problems of accuracy Does not arrive at non-users overcrowding Figure 2: the flowchart of this system Siren This piece of equipment that makes very loud warning sounds is very good using in countryside, and can be used at night to wake up the people Cannot give details message Through the results that we have emerged from the table 3 we can see that the best way to inform people about disasters and this feature of message are available in most mobile phones Figure 4. Architecture of Flood detection system Using GSM

6 REFERENCES Figure 5. The flowchart of this system VI. CONCLUSION The flood detection system is described in this paper. The system will determine the current water level by using wireless sensor network, which will also provide notification of SMS via GSM modem. SMS is as an helpful alert communication tools that can distribute the information to floods victim in a particular area. This system is able to detect a level of water and send that data to the main flood control centre even if it close or far away from the sensor that detect the level of water. The purpose of radio module in this project is used as the medium to send the data from transmitter module to the receiver module. [1] S. I. Khan, Y. Hong, J. Wang et al., Satellite Remote Sensing and Hydrologic Modeling for Flood Inundation Mapping in Lake Victoria Basin: Implications for Hydrologic Prediction in Ungauged Basins, Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 49, no. 1, pp , [2] N. A. A. Aziz, and K. A. Aziz, "Managing disaster with wireless sensor networks." pp [3] K. Pahlavan, and A. H. Levesque, Wireless information networks: Wiley Online Library, [4] I. Aziz, I. Hamizan, N. Haron et al., "Cooperative flood detection using GSMD via SMS." pp [5] S. K. Subramaniam, V. R. Gannapathy, S. Subramonian et al., Flood level indicator and risk warning system for remote location monitoring using flood observatory system, WSEAS Transactions on Systems and Control, vol. 5, no. 3, pp , [6] S. Martinis, A. Twele, and S. Voigt, Towards operational near real-time flood detection using a split-based automatic thresholding procedure on high resolution TerraSAR-X data, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, vol. 9, pp , [7] Z. M. Zain, and M. Khalid, "Development of Flood Detector System Using MC68HC11 Microcontroller." pp [8] Y. J. Cho, Y. B. Lin, and H. C. H. Rao, Reducing the network cost of call delivery to GSM roamers, Network, IEEE, vol. 11, no. 5, pp , [9] A. Noori, Room monitoring system using radio frequency (RF) technology and passive infrared sensor (PIR), [10] C. Wattegama, ICT for disaster management, United Nations Development Programme-Asia- Pacific Development Information Programme, 2007.

7 Mohammed I. khalaf was born on 13 February 1986 in Ramadi, Iraq. He received his B.Sc. Degree in Information System from the College of Computer, University of Anbar, in He received his Master in Information Technology program at the College of Graduate Studies, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), in 2012 Malaysia.

Modern Electricity Billing System and Fuse Detection Using GSM

Modern Electricity Billing System and Fuse Detection Using GSM Santhya, Sandhya, Saranya, Sowmeya U.G Student, Department of ECE, SNS College of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India Associate Professor,