A practical overview of the components typically used in a flood warning system. Contact Greenspan for more information: cgoding at greenspan dot com dot sg +65 98214182

1. A reputation for delivering innovative,
integrated environmental systems
globally

2. Presentation Outline
• Who are Greenspan?
• What projects have we completed?
• Flood Warning Systems
– What is a typical flood warning system
– Field Stations
– Communications
– Base Stations
– The path forward

3. Flood Warning
Who are Greenspan? Systems
Hydrographic &
Irrigation Water Quality
Solutions
Water Infrastructure
Monitoring Oceanographic

4. Who are Greenspan?
2010
2000 • >100 Australian Projects
• Purchased • Coffs Harbour, Brisbane,
by Tyco Sydney, Perth,
1998 Singapore, Kuala
• First >$1m Lumpur, Vancouver
project • World leading projects:
• SMART,
1995 • Yangtze,
• 2 offices • Environment Canada

5. Our Staff
And Vancouver! • Experts comprising:
Malaysia – Hydrologists, Hydrographers and
Scientists
Singapore – Engineers (Installation & Service)
• Civil, Mechanical, Chemical,
Instrumentation, IT
– Project Managers
– Factory and Field Technicians
– Consultants
Newcastle Brisbane – Sales and Marketing
Coffs Harbour – Administrative
Perth
Sydney • Leading experts, all in-house
Hobart

6. Our Affiliations
• Campbell Scientific
– Asian distributor for environmental
monitoring projects
• Control Microsystems
– Regional Representation and
SCADAPartner Integrator
• Aquatic Informatics
– Alliance Partner
– Distributor for Asia, Pacific and
Middle East
Although we are affiliated with these companies, we are free to choose the most
suitable product for each application. Companies that manufacture
everything in house have a tendency to recommend their
products when others may be more suitable.

7. Our Projects
Environment Canada Yangtze River 3 Gorges
Hydrometric Network Dam
Malaysian SMART Tunnel
Khuzestan Water Singapore Overflow
Quality Initiative Network
Kenya Indonesian
Hydrometric Hydro-Electric Over 100 projects in
Network Power Plants Australia
(including QLD Main roads FWS
and Coffs Harbour FWS design)

8. Flood Event Review – Hurricane Katrina
• Costliest natural disaster in the history
of the US
– USD$81b, >1,836 deaths
• Most severe loss of life in New Orleans
when the levee system (2000 miles)
failed, resulting in lawsuit against US
Army Corp of Engineers.
• Canal design helped funnel storm
surge to at 20% height to the flood and
make it much faster
• WMO, BoM, USGS promote “Live with
the flood”

9. The goal of a flood warning system
• To provide timely measurement and modelling of
flood potential to areas at risk
• Engineer a system that will not fail during flood
conditions
• Maximise the ability of those who are charged
with the responsibility for preserving life to have
sufficient warning of impending danger.

10. Typical Field Stations
Weather Stations
• To provide data to model storm
potential
• To measure when the storm starts and
the intensity of the storm
• To understand dynamic conditions that
have an impact on flood run off, such
as soil moisture
• To collect valuable meteorological data
for historical data set

11. Typical Field Stations
Upper Catchment Rainfall
• Early warning indicator
• Quantify what the models have
predicted
• Without meteorological models, these
are the first indicator, along with
weather conditions

12. Typical Field Stations
Modernisation of existing stilling wells
• Replace chart records or mechanical
devices with accurate instruments and
telemetry systems
• Often have the best historical records
for levels and flood events which are
valuable for calibrating flood models

13. Typical Field Stations
Raised Platform Hydrometric Station
• Above the flood zone
• Rainfall and gas purge level

14. Typical Field Stations
Surface Radar Velocity
• First of its type measures velocity, not
just level
• Requires calibration to relate velocity to
flow (volume)
• Can be used over large ranges such as
those experienced in flood conditions

15. Typical Field Stations
In-stream Doppler Current Meter
• Velocity provides much more
information than simply level
• For flow with hysteresis or backwater
effects
• Or where high flow/velocity gauging’s
have not been made
• Below cease to flow for total load
calculations, higher for flood warning
measurements

16. Typical Field Stations
Stormwater blockages or build up in cities
• Detects blockages in the underground
network of stormwater or sewer
systems to alert for maintenance before
an failure occurs
• Localised city flooding is often cause by
drainage failures
• Can also be used for underground car
parks or other systems to provide early
warning to parked vehicles to remove
the imminent danger

17. Typical Field Stations
Audible Warning Stations
• To alert those in the flood zone
• Combination of high intensity sirens as
well as voiced announcements through
loud speakers
• Critical anywhere that experiences high
rates of change in level, or below dams
or levees that can be breached
• Combine with direct warning systems

18. Typical Field Stations
On site visible warning
• Road signs with warning lights when
flooding is active
• One of the greatest dangers in more
developed areas are people trying to
cross flood zones in their vehicle

19. Typical Field Stations
Flood Gate Control
• To control and divert the flow of the
flood waters
• When flood warning can also be flood
mitigation
• Pumps can also be controlled

20. Typical Field Stations
CCTV
• To verify measurements and view things not
directly measured
• Can help stop people putting themselves in
danger during flood conditions, such as to
inspect dams

21. Communications
Customised to suit every application, mixing between:
- Wired (cable, leased line, PSTN)
- Radio (UHF/VHF/Microwave etc)
- Cellular (GSM, GPRS, 3G)
- Satellite
- True redundancy is achieved by mixing 2 of the
above methods, with the most reliable during flood
events being satellite
- SMS should not be used to transmit data from a
station as these can overload in flood events

22. Control Centres
Typically include
• Redundant communications
infrastructure
• Redundant locations (disaster
recovery centre)
• SCADA
• Modelling
• Historian
• Alarm dissemination

23. Modelling
Data once collected is of value to understand the
conditions in the field without having to visit the
field. However, with the implementation of a
model, these current conditions can be used to
understand what may occur in the future.
Models can be anything, from a basic rainfall run-
off model to highly detailed and complex models
including numerical weather prediction.

24. Data Correction, Validation and Statistics
Hydrographic data should be
processed with hydrographic tools.
Particularly, the following items are
important:
• Data Correction (i.e. to repair data
incorrectly measured in the field)
• Quality coding to ensure only high
quality data is used in model forecasts
• Data Processing such as using rating
curves to develop stage-discharge
relationships
• Statistics
• Reporting

25. RECAP:
The goal of a flood warning system
• To provide timely measurement and modelling of
flood potential to areas at risk
• Engineer a system that will not fail during flood
conditions
• Maximise the ability of those who are charged
with the responsibility for preserving life to have
sufficient warning of impending danger.

26. Where to from here?
• Make sure that there is a commitment to save lives and property
through the investment required to engineer a suitable solution
• Develop a scope of works and specification through expert
consultancy
• Manage the project implementation
• We highly recommend a visit to the Stormwater Management And
Road Tunnel (SMART) in Kuala Lumpur if at all possible as it is
an excellent example of the topics discussed here today.