Towards Smart Mobility During Flooding Events in Urban Areas using Crowdsourced Information

Flooding hinders the ability of residents to move through-out urban areas. Current weather information systems provide weather forecasts with a granularity too coarse to inform city residents of floods at a street level. Reliable real-time data is also limited in some cities and only a few systems enable users to report flooding events. This research project aims to inform residents about flooding events through the Flooding Alert System (FAS), which seamlessly integrates real-time data, crowdsourced data, historical data and provides timely and precise information to users so that they can make informed decisions during these events. The proposed Smart Cities solution, uses Internet of Things sensors equipped with an image processing algorithm for approximating the water level at at-risk areas. In adittion, a mobile application allows users to report and receive alerts of nearby flooding events as they occur. The expected products will be piloted in Guadalajara, JAL, MX. Transferability of our solution is planned to be evaluated through the application of these products in El Paso, TX, USA.