Flooding is a growing worldwide problem, and Mexico is struggling to manage flood situations which are increasing in regularity and severity. Of the natural hazards capable of leading to disasters, flooding is the deadliest. Many developing countries have poor water monitoring infrastructure but in common with the UK they have “state of the art” mobile phone systems. With this research, and based upon water engineering and radio communications expertise in the UK combined with water engineering and networks expertise in Mexico, we will make it possible for Mexico to develop its own flood detection systems using world leading hydrology sensing and prediction methods combined with their own public land mobile networks.

Such systems would increase resilience in developing countries but also be useful to the UK for flood monitoring and future planning where transparency has become an issue.

Currently, there is also a demand for the finer details of flood incidents to be made available and this is not yet possible with static widely spaced monitoring sites. Currently, management of flood situations in Mexico and other countries is largely carried out through prediction of water behaviour (Hydro Meteorological Warning System) which is based on estimates calculated by measuring rainfall, estimated run offs and measurement of water levels. In Mexico two central registers and rain measuring stations are used to gather data. The data collected is compared with pre-established risk thresholds which determine whether a warning should be raised. Typically, these are collections of sensors pointing out imminent flooding rather than systems that predict flooding and there is no attempt to make general water data transparent.

In the UK, the environmental agency (EA) run over 1400 gauging stations for forecasting floods, issuing flood warnings. The UK is planning to increase the number of gauging stations by several thousand in the short term to address the predicted problems of climate change. Currently the EAs water system requires large sums of money to upgrade to modern ISO standards. The UK has separate communications nets for its energy, water and emergency services as well as access to satellites. People are now talking about using mobile networks for all of these networks which may well be cheaper and just as reliable. This research would allow Mexico to design an affordable real time flood predication system over its mobile phone network that can be deployed quickly to provide real time flood prediction data and also show them how to use it effectively.

In Mexico the data gathered will allow for the creation of a hydrological numeric model, as well as a hydraulic model to predict water levels in rural and urban areas of the Colima-Villa de Álvarez area. Recent events such as hurricane Patricia in Mexico (October 2015) and heavy rainfall in the UK (December 2015 – wettest December on record) that both caused wide spread flooding have emphasised the need for systems that can predict the dynamic behaviour of large-scale water flows.

To improve flood prediction in Mexico several areas of research need to be addressed. Concisely, the data for real time flood prediction needs be sensed in the right place and at the right time, transmitted in harsh conditions, fused in the cloud and used to make reliable flood prediction models. Our international research would address each of these areas using UK expertise in Water Engineering and Radio Communications to complement Mexican knowledge of Water Engineering, Data Networks and Enterprise.