Community Project: Build a LoraWan IoT station to warn of Floods

The west of Ireland is subject to heavy flooding every year.
Galway city, Kinvara, Gort, Clarinbridge, inland and on the bay (see notes below)

Goals
The goal of this project is to engage with local community on the issue of local flooding through a community-led effort in building and deploying low-cost, connected, community IoT warning systems.

The sensors would supplement the current sensors deployed by the OPW. See https://waterlevel.ie/0000029004/

This project will run over a 6 week period.

These will integrate directly with local community groups, sms and twitter in an easy to understand format. The goal is to empower the community to take part in monitoring and implementing local solutions to supplement local government.

The initial project will build a prototype for deployment in a local community in Galway to evaluate and test for accuracy and, importantly, local engagement. This project will be supported by The Ladder non-profit and others.

What we'll do
We will build an 'early warning' connected IoT system for local communities to be deployed on rivers and bays as well as providing other useful information through channels people use.

This first meeting
This is the intro call to review the requirements, assign teams and get started.

More info? colm 'at' theladder.io

NOTES

Why does Galway flood? See David Murray's blog post here
https://southgalwayfloods.wordpress.com/2020/03/08/south-galway-flooding-solution-current-situation/

mpact:
It brings the road network to a halt (2015.16 floods closed 60 roads)
It has isolated whole communities for 56 days
It has blocked access on key roads for over 100 days.
It has flooded 1000s of acres across 200 farms
It had flooded/badly threatened….
over 30 farm buildings
over 70 homes
over 12 businesses
churches, heritage sites
our national parks/SACs

Sensors
There is an API for the sensors in Ireland.
API Water level guages: https://waterlevel.ie/page/api/

What constitutes a warning?
TBD but potentially
Levels have exceeded normal e.g. to a point that will start to flood a road. Would require calibration

Flow rate unusually high? Requires acoustic doppler or something similar