Dear friends,
I am working on a project for comparing the communication systems before and during flood events and I would like to know what are the flood communication/warning systems are being used nowadays and how we can improve it.
Please provide the detail information or any link to such information if possible.
Thank you.
I think this may vary greatly by country. In the United Stated, text messaging and Twitter (as well as other social media) are more and more used by officials to broadly distribute information.
It depends on who.you.are co m indicating with. In our urban areas people tend to turn to Twitter when there is a natural emergency, but we get lots of disasters. However in a nearby rural area we found in a recent disaster we had to.use Facebook, and it had to be digital friendly because majority of residents didn't have the money for home broadband
In many parts of the Mohawk Watershed (and elsewhere in NY State) a reverse 911 phone system is used.
We have recently had two major flood events (2006, 2011) in the Mohawk watershed in NY, and we have had some issues with communication between communities. One general issue is that good real-time information may be difficult to get during an event, and this is typically left to local emergency managers from different communities (counties in this case). But the communication between local managers has been difficult, and not efficient. This is hopefully changing because of the issues raised after the two events. During Irene (2011) there was a special problem that power and communications were lost locally in the region, so this obviously complicated communication. We have two issues that require special management because a more rapid response is required. One is the Gilboa Dam in the Schoharie River, which drains into the Mohawk. In 2005 it was discovered that the dam was impaired, and a plan was swiftly put into place for a multi-year rehabilitation. In the meantime, a warning system was put into place to warn residents in case of catastrophic failure, and this was a series of 20 sirens that extended down valley. This dam has not failed since, but the sirens were used once in the catastrophic flooding of Irene in 2011. This was fortunate because the phones where down in part of the affected area. This is an example of an automated system that successfully warned people to evacuate, and it likely saved lives. The other issue we have is ice jam flooding during winter/spring warming and this causes breakup events. In these events very rapid rise in flood stage can occur if ice gets jammed up, and blocks flow (rises in stage of 5-20' are possible in hours). In the lower Mohawk ice jam flooding dominates the flood record, so about 5 years ago the USGS installed an ice jam monitoring system so that rapid changes in stage could be monitored by emergency management. Since we have had small jams, but nothing major. This system provides real time data to the internet by both telemetry and hard-wired internet connections.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-plan-for-the-unthinkable-deluge-2448365.php
https://ny.water.usgs.gov/flood/MohawkIce/
Before flood comm system and during flood comm systems are in different ways.. if its a during flood you may see large floods or flash floods? in a urban area its different than a rural area. community based comm systems are there.. if you need extended info lets discuss later... better check in ADPC web.. I have practice many disaster comm systems and some are introduced by me..
Hello Javed, please see my conversation with Dr. Neil Parker at the following link, https://www.researchgate.net/post/Anyone_interested_in_studying_if_a_new_mobile_device_visual_signaling_system_would_improve_Search_Rescue_in_the_aftermath_of_a_major_disaster A post disaster survivor visual signaling system would be very helpful.
You'll find two general cases... relatively-gradual-onset "riverine" floods, and very quick-onset "flash" floods. Slow-onset floods don't usually require heroic warning efforts... working with mass and social media is generally enough to build public awareness of the threat. Flash floods, on the other hand, require very rapid systems like sirens or cellular-broadcast alerting.
IMportant is to assess the scale of the flooding, When we talk about large scale floodings in the netherlands f.e. we have to face the fact that internet and telephone will be down directly or after a few hours when an area is flooded (the masts of the mobile telephone network will also be flooded as well as the power will fail soon) In those cases only radio's and sattelite telephones are still available
Dear Javed
There have been various studies research how to improve the effectiveness of communication of flood warnings. These may be of use:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283637477_Communication_and_dissemination_of_probabilistic_flood_warnings_-_Final_report
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269931817_Probabilistic_flood_warnings_-_Do_eight_out_of_ten_people_prefer_them
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291010/scho0909bqyh-e-e.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/290732/scho0509bqbl-e-e.pdf
http://evidence.environment-agency.gov.uk/FCERM/Libraries/FCERM_Project_Documents/SC080039_cost_flood_warn_and_forecast.sflb.ashx
Technical Report Communication and dissemination of probabilistic flood warni...
Conference Paper Probabilistic flood warnings – Do eight out of ten people prefer them?
These sites may also be of use:
https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/311020/flood_warnings_LIT_5215.pdf
https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/08/communicating-flood-risk/
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