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This repository houses information regarding the build, deployment, and maintenance of the FloodnNet project's flood sensor.

About FloodNet

FloodNet is a partnership between academic researchers at New York University and the City University of New York, and NYC municipal agencies (NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice and Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer), working in consultation with community organizations.

note: This repository is relevant only to the flood sensors, i.e., the end-device sensing component within a larger sensor network infrastructure. For more details about the complete network infrastructure(figure below) refer to the FloodNet documentation website.

Further, Gateway and NodeRED repositiories are linked in the additional resources section for reference.



How to build a flood sensor

This section contains the necessary resources to build a flood sensor from the raw materials state to a final product.

BOM

  • The total sensor cost per unit is below $200.
  • When mounting hardware is included the total cost of the sensor plus mounting hardware comes around $210.
  • A list of complete bill of materials for the sensor and mounting hardware is available in the BOM document.

Sensor build instructions with Quality Assurance Procedures

  • The step-by-step sensor build instructions including images and quality assurance steps are detailed in the Sensor build with Quality Assurance Procedures page on the FloodNet's documentation website to ensure high quality sensor builds with consistency.

Installing sensor software

  • After the sensor assembly stage is the installation of the sensor firmware. To install the sensor's firmware follow the steps detailed in the of the firmware folder's README.md.

Quality Control and testing

  • After the production/assembly stage, quality control (QC) tests are performed on every sensor to validate the data quality.
  • In-lab testing and Quality Control checks are detailed in the FloodNet's Quality Control page on the documentation website.

How to deploy a flood sensor

The FloodNet's flood sensors are deployed on street sign posts, over the sidewalk, following the permission from NYC to do so. This section details instructions to identify a deployment location, choosing an optimal mounting option, and finally, deploying a flood sensor.

Deployment location identification strategy

  • Sensor deployment locations are determined in consultation with government and community partners, using criteria that include estimated risks of flood hazard and impact, social vulnerability, and spatial coverage.
  • Further, multiple assessment strategies combined contribute to the sensor locations identification process, including but not limited to - community engagement, flood maps, historically flood-prone neighborhoods, and city agency recommendations.
  • The Flood Hotspots Identifacation manual details the strategies mentioned above.

Flood sensor deployment steps

Choosing an optimal mounting option

The sensor is susceptable to noise in the following scenarios - mounted over grass, mounted over soil/bumpy sidewalk, and when sensor measuring area is of different heights for example is half sidewalk and half road.

Deployment steps

  1. Sensor can be mounted in two ways: on the front side, and on the back side of the drive rail.

    Back Side: If mounting on the back side (figure below), the mount needs to be wider and in this case use a Slotted Flat Mending Plate and 4" hex bolts for mounting the whole assembly onto the drive rail.


    Front side: When mounting on the front side, the L-bracket can be direclty mounted onto the drive rail like shown below.


  2. Align the sensor horizontal to the ground, while avoiding too much tilt on any sides.

  3. Solar panel mount: Mount the panel on the top of the struct channel mount with the panel facing the South direction.

  4. Bundle the solar cable and ziptie it to secure it beneath the struct chanel and away from the sensor cone.


How to maintain a flood sensor

The maintenance maual is the README.md document which contains the information needed for sensor maintenance runs and visits. Below are a list of common maintenance visit reasons listed and linked to the recommended fixes detailed on the manual.

Common maintenance visit reasons

  • Trending down battery profile due to:
    • Not enough sunlight
    • Battery failure
  • Brownouts
  • Antenna Issues
  • Manual Firmware updates
  • Operational Issues:
    • Inaccurate or unexpected sensor measurements
    • No sensor measurements
  • Sensor swapouts in the case of critical damages or failures

How to submit an issue

Any kind of issues or contributions are welcome! To submit an issues/bugs/fixes please use the github issues feature of this repo here. Please use the templates below and tag the issue with its relevant label when opening a new issue.

For general issues:

  ### Issue/Bug/Suggestion 
  - description here about the issue
  - any reasoning or observations

  ### Sensor version and firmware version 
  - version of the sensor hardware and/or firmware

For issues related to sensor operations:

  ### Issue/Bug/Suggestion 
  - description here about the issue
  - sensor up/down with date and time
  - any reasoning or observations

  ### Sensor version and firmware version 
  - version of the sensor hardware and/or firmware

  ### Metadata
  1. `deployment_id`
  2. `dev_id`
  3. deployed by information

  ### Fixes/Action
  -

Additional resources

  1. An excellent guide to soldering by Adafruit!
  2. Common soldering problems and fixes
  3. NYC Stormwater floodmaps

Shield: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0