Obsservation for Heavy Rainfall with Smart Rainwater Tanks

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Toshiyuki Moriyama, Katsuhiro Morishita, Shinobu Izumi

Thursday 2 july 2015

17:36 - 17:39h at Central America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Water resources and hydro informatics (WRHI), (ST) Catchment hydrology, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 13H. WRHI - Catchment

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The rapid expansion of urban areas has resulted in widespread forest and paddy field destruction that increases the risk of flash flooding at times of heavy rainfall. However, it is difficult to construct dams or huge rainwater storage facilities in some catchment areas. In response to this, we propose the use of smart rainwater tanks (SRTs) equipped with water level sensors, outflow monitoring, and water pump controls. In our design, SRTs will be connected via a network that will make it is possible to collect monitoring data and issue pump control commands to individual tanks. These connected tanks will make up a rainwater grid system (RGS). When a flood warning is issued by self-organized map (SOM), which is one of pattern recognition techniques, issues a flood warning, a pre-discharge command is sent to this RGS after which the pumps of each smart tank will automatically begin discharging stored water to free up space for impending rainfall. Collected data will be gathered via an Internet cloud system that will allow residents to comprehend how the RGS is functioning and how much rainwater has been captured. It will also be possible to monitor rainfall amounts using this RGS since it functions as a high-density rain gauge. This is important because rains over 100 mm/hr sometimes cause serious attenuation of the reflectivity of rainfall cell monitored by X-band multi-parameter weather radar networks. A prototype SRT system has been installed a gravel filled underground 110 tons tank at Oginoura Garden Suburb, which is a maisonette-type housing complex, where its functions are now being tested. As a result, to measure the rainfall amount with gravel filled underground tank is not suitable, because there are somewhat spike of water level when heavy rainfall is occurred.