Citation: Wannachai, A.; Aramkul, S.;
Suntaranont, B.; Somchit, Y.;
Champrasert, P. HERO: Hybrid
Effortless Resilient Operation
Stations for Flash Flood Early
Warning Systems. Sensors 2022, 22,
4108. https://doi.org/10.3390/
s22114108
Academic Editors: Alvaro Araujo
Pinto and Hacene Fouchal
Received: 26 April 2022
Accepted: 24 May 2022
Published: 28 May 2022
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Article
HERO: Hybrid Effortless Resilient Operation Stations for Flash
Flood Early Warning Systems
Autanan Wannachai
1
, Somrawee Aramkul
2
, Benya Suntaranont
3
, Yuthapong Somchit
1
and Paskorn Champrasert
1,
*
1
Optimization Theory and Applications for Engineering SYStems Research Group, Faculty of Engineering,
Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand; autanan_w@cmu.ac.th (A.W.);
yuthapong@eng.cmu.ac.th (Y.S.)
2
Department of Computer, Faculty of Science and Technology, Chiang Mai Rajabhat University,
Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand; somrawee@cmru.ac.th
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna, Tak 63000, Thailand;
benya.eng.cmu@gmail.com
* Correspondence: paskorn.c@cmu.ac.th
Abstract:
Floods are the most frequent type of natural disaster. Flash floods are one of the most
common types of floods, caused by rapid and excessive rainfall. Normally, when a flash flood occurs,
the water of the upstream river increases rapidly and flows to the downstream watersheds. The
overflow of water increasingly submerges villages in the drainage basins. Flash flood early warning
systems are required to mitigate losses. Water level monitoring stations can be installed at upstream
river areas. However, telemetry stations face several challenges because the upstream river areas
are far away and lack of public utilities (e.g., electric power and telephone lines). This research
proposes hybrid effortless resilient operation stations, named HERO stations, in the flash flood early
warning system. The HERO station was designed and developed with a modular design concept to be
effortlessly customized and maintained. The HERO station adapts its working operation against the
environmental changes to maintain a long working period with high data sensing accuracy. Moreover,
the HERO station can switch its communication mode between the centralized and decentralized
communication modes to increase availability. The network of the HERO stations has already been
deployed in the northern part of Thailand. It results in improvements of the telemetry station’s
availability. The HERO stations can adapt to environmental changes. The flash flood early warning
messages can be disseminated to the villagers to increase the flood preparation time and to reduce
flash flood damage.
Keywords:
telemetry station; Early Warning Systems (EWS); flash flood warning; wireless sensor
network
1. Introduction
A flash flood is a major natural disaster that creates significant loss [
1
–
3
]. It happens
during prolonged rainfall or extreme rainfall over a short-term period [
4
]. These affect river
water level, which increases rapidly and floods the flood plain with unimaginable speed [
5
].
From the number of disasters between 1998 and 2017, floods happen more frequently than
other disasters, accounting for 41% of all disasters. The number of people affected by
floods was about 2 billion, with floods killing 142,088 people and causing economic loss
amounting to USD 656 billion over the past 19 years [6].
A flash flood early warning system is designed to mitigate the loss. The early warning
system’s goal is to give enough time for villagers in the risk area to save themselves before
the flash flood impact, which is known as ‘golden time’ or ‘preparing time’ [
7
]. The flash
flood early warning system and the flood risk management concepts can save lives and
Sensors 2022, 22, 4108. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22114108 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
