Heliyon (Oct 2023)
Inventing a robust road-vehicle flood level monitoring device for disaster mitigation
Abstract
Flooding impedes road utility and the frequency has increased across countries of the world owing to global climate change phenomena. Global road flooding casualties have risen from 371,800 in 2015 to 842,000 in 2017 resulting to economic losses valued at approximately US$71 billion. Existing devices that offer warning signals on safe threshold during flooding are predictive in nature and based on complex technologies that are cumbersome and rather expensive thereby affecting the attractiveness to low-economy societies of developing countries. There is therefore a dare need for better inventions towards greater mitigation. This paper presents an adaptive, affordable, robust, efficient and effective road vehicle flood level monitoring device for detecting rising flood on roads above a user defined safe threshold to mitigate road flooding disasters. The device operates on the principle of level conductivity sensor. The developed device offers interoperability with Google map enabling the level of flood on road to be accessed by road users online when fully commercialized. By this, road users are aware of the dangerous levels of flood to enable them use alternative routes. The study therefore recommends for adoption of mandatory inclusion of this invention on roads towards averting the usual road flooding hazard in Africa.
