Low-Cost Electrodynamic Pluviometers for Flood and Debris Flow Monitoring

Mitigating the consequences of flash rainfall has become essential for the safety of populations and the promotion of local tourism. A non-structural measure could involve a sensor-based nowcasting system to detect increasingly frequent and intense rainfall events driven by climate change. Therefore, developing wide-range, connected, cheap, small, and easy-to-install rain gauges is desirable. To achieve a useful network of monitoring, a set of technologies such as electrodynamic sensor devices supported by real-time processing and the Internet of Things is proposed. This comparative investigation aimed to evaluate the implementation-friendly network of small, low-cost, solid-state pluviometers for near-real-time monitoring of an early warning system. The ability of a recent patent to provide cumulative rainfall estimates every ten seconds was evaluated for river system flooding, which extends the warning time by 3–4 min in a 1 km 2 basin. Our results found that even with a rainfall uncertainty of 10%, a network of these new instruments reduced errors in flood wave severity and time estimations. Moreover, intensity–duration thresholds of landslide triggering and debris movements can be modified by flash rainfalls. Specifically, coastal areas with high-density populations can greatly benefit from this solution.