Climate change is having an increasing impact on our day-to-day lives. Flash flooding around the globe, from seasonally and regionally uncharacteristic heavy rainfall, is becoming more and more frequent. The devastation caused by flash flooding in the Libyan city Derna, is a very current example.
In response to the escalating challenges posed by climate change, Deutsche Telekom and Spekter, a German software specialist, have teamed up to create an early warning system for heavy rainfall events, for cities and municipalities worldwide.
The system uses on-site IoT sensors to measure precipitation, water levels and runoff behaviour in local rivers and canals. The data is then transmitted to the cloud for analysis using Deutsche Telekom’s NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-M machine and sensor networks. If these indices exceed previously defined critical thresholds, the system warns via an app and the emergency services are notified, in-time to take preventative or life and infrastructure saving action.
Real-time hydrology data at a glance
Cities and municipalities are being presented with increasing hydrological imbalances, from prolonged regional droughts and related water shortages, to flash floods and inundations. Municipal heavy rainfall management and flood prevention measures are a necessary adaptation.
Spekter has developed IoT sensors for this purpose. The self-sufficient units continuously send this hydrological information to the cloud for real-time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) monitoring and analysis.
“States and municipalities have recognised how great the need for action is in risk management for heavy rain events. With our early warning system, we provide emergency services with a valuable time gain of up to half an hour before flooding occurs,” says Reinhard Brodrecht, managing director of Spekter GmbH. “To do this, we use network technology from Deutsche Telekom. Thanks to the international availability of LTE-M and NB-IoT, it is easy to provide our solution flexibly.”
Comment on this article below or via X: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow
