Inspiration

Our team is from a state surrounded by bodies of water, like rivers, lagoons, and the Gulf of Mexico itself. So, we are no strangers to floods and droughts (even though the latter is least common). Even right now we are experiencing serious losses where a big part of the city has suffered the consequences of the lack of preparation of the state government.

Impact

Floods are one of the natural disasters that cause the most damage, from public areas, like parks and roads, to private places, like family homes, museums, universities, or government institutions, to name a few. 

In 2012, toke place a successful case study in Mexico, expressly the one from Baró, Díaz-Delgado, Calederón, Esteller, Cadena y Franco, who developed and applied a methodology with the purpose of quantifying the potential tangible damages in residential and agricultural areas cause by floods. 

This particular methodology can be used in the whole Mexican Republic as it takes as a basis a set of data with national coverage and easy access through federal, state, and municipal dependencies. (Ceballos Bernal et al., 2016)

For this study the tangible potential damages were divided in direct and indirect for each one of the sectors, the former being the ones produced by direct contact with water or by immersion and the latter's by traffic interruption, salary loss and business benefits, etc. (James & Lee, 1970)

In the following table can be found the mathematical model of tangible damages on residential zones cause by floods:

Where h: maximum depth reached in flood (meters); DDRmax: Direct damages in residential zones (Maximum cost); DDRmin: Direct damages in residential zones (Minimum Cost); DDRmp: Direct damages in residential zones (Most probable cost; Ln(h) Natural logarithm of maximum height reach by water in the flood.

Approach

We decided to face this problem focusing first in what we would have like to have in these kind of situations, gathering resources from INEGI, NASA and other sources to generate the best calculations with minimum time difference, that will send alerts to the common people and the authorities task with monitoring the system, allowing them the opportunity to guard their belongings and more importantly, their lives. It will also use sensors located in strategic places (like dam gates, inside rivers near cities and provinces near sea level) and they will emit an electric pulse to be interpreted by a raspberry board, to send an alert to the system of imminent overflow.

Despite the high temperatures that are reached around the world, the sensors won’t have any trouble working in any kind of residential environment because they can operate in temperatures between -40° and 70°C, which is more than ideal for the hot summers and cold winters that are experienced practically anywhere. They are a great asset for the whole of the project because they will contribute other sources of data to analyze and calculate the probability of both floods and droughts. Even though there are good alternatives in regards to the type of the sensors, we decided to favor the ones with analog signals, because these are the most effectives to measure out the level of something; in this case, it being water; through a certain period of time.

TLALOC is conceived to be a two-part project, having a web and a mobile application. The first will include a “Dashboard” where it will be shown the array of factors that will help to determine if the zone in question is in imminent danger using a board of graphics and indicators. 

Those factors been the following: 

• Bump maps
• Sensors
• Rainfall records
• Water level records of the rivers

These could also be used to identify the drought locations using the rainfall and water level records to determine the period of the last rain and the chances of another one taking place.

And on the mobile app, not only will these previously mentioned functions be available, but it will also allow the users to generate reports of risk events (like the accumulation of garbage, cracks in the retaining walls of rivers, overflow in bodies of water and ponding on the streets).

Viability

This whole project would be of great help, not only to the governments around the world, but to the very citizens, because in reality, they are the most affected by this kind of disasters, and having a tool like this one, would offer them and their respective authorities a chance to avoid near total losses in their belongings, like furniture, mementos, important documents and the like.

An even though, at the beginning it may seem like a great expense buying and implementing these applications and sensors, in the long run this would help to avoid damage in public and private infrastructure, from government institutions, private businesses and the homes of many families; and more importantly, save the lives of children, adults and the elderly population.

Pitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-FiiMvpuk8

Slides (Web Application): https://www.figma.com/proto/HFLolaBUlWmcLRJOaGz7tQ/Tlaloc-Web?node-id=32%3A1335&scaling=min-zoom

Slides (Mobile App): https://www.figma.com/proto/HFLolaBUlWmcLRJOaGz7tQ/Tlaloc-Web?node-id=14%3A1&scaling=min-zoom

Aside from the functional prototypes we were able to develop some rough first version of two modules, the first being one from the web app where the users (in this case the government administrator) can generate alerts in any given sector of the map:

Demo: https://tlaloc-ff2d0.web.app/

Repository: https://github.com/Karl992/tlaloc-web/tree/main

And then, those alerts can be visualized on this second module from the mobile app, where users can also generate reports of risk events:

Demo: https://tlalocapp.web.app/#/

Repository: https://github.com/TheDjuls/tlalocapp-mobile

Data sources

To keep track of the rainfalls taking place around the globe, we use the satellites NASA puts at our disposal, which is why the source use for this project is:

https://gpm.nasa.gov/data/visualizations/precip-apps

Flooding zones, this value is obtained from a set of historical records and bump maps from a given location, and in regards of Mexico they can be visualized with the following link:

http://gaia.inegi.org.mx/mdm6/?v=bGF0OjE4LjE1MjA0LGxvbjotOTIuOTc3MzIsejo2LGw6YzExMXNlcnZpY2lvc3xjNDI0

Droughts, are the result of different factors, but with the rainfall records, we are able to calculate them:

http://gaia.inegi.org.mx/mdm6/?s=MTM2NjI3NTE=

The water level of the rivers is heavily associated with the rainfall that may occur on a certain amount of days or month, that is why it is imperative to know at any given moment the symbiosis of both, for Mexico CONAGUA provided the following data:

https://datos.gob.mx/busca/dataset/niveles-actuales-de-rios

https://datos.gob.mx/busca/dataset/precipitacion-actual-diaria

https://datos.gob.mx/busca/dataset/precipitacion-actual-horaria

Literature

Ceballos Bernal, A. I., Baró Suárez, J. E., & Días-Delgado, C. (2016). Estimación de pérdidas económicas directas provocadas por inundación. Aplicación de las curvas inundación-daños en países en desarrollo. Investigaciones Geográficas, 1(56), 7-9. RUA - Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante. 10.14198/INGEO2016.65.10

James, L. D., & Lee, R. R. (1970). Economics of Water Resources Planning. McGraw-Hill.

Queensland Government. (2018, June 12). How do we forecast floods? Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist. Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://www.chiefscientist.qld.gov.au/publications/understanding-floods/forecasting-floods