A real time urban flood monitoring system for metro Manila

A real time urban flood monitoring system was deployed into two streets (Earnshaw and San Diego Streets) on España Boulevard, Manila. The system consists of a ground-based pressure sensor and a rain gauge connected to a locally designed data logger with telemetry capabilites using GPRS network. Data from the stations are received by a TCP server and is processed in order to provide visual information and realtime flood updates through mobile and web services. An ahead of time flood estimation system was implemented using a Random Forest algorithm in order to provide an early warning advisory to motorist and users of the system. Results from the test validation show that the resulting prediction model indicates a strong predictive performance without relying on rainfall-runoff model obtained through geological and hydrological surveys.