Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks for flood prediction decision support systems

Recent advancements in the fields of sensor equipment and wireless sensor networks have opened the window of opportunity for many innovative applications. In this paper, we propose a new architecture for building decision support systems using heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. The architecture is built around standard hardware and existing wireless sensor networks technology. We show the effectiveness of the proposed architecture by applying it to a flood prediction scenario.

I. Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) [1] revolution where cost efficient low-powered sensors and actuators are being deployed in massive scale over large areas and communicating over the Internet is now becoming a reality. In combination with state-of-the-art wireless sensor networks (WSNs) [2] technologies interesting applications can easily be developed reaching far beyond what has been delivered by M2M (Machine-to-machine) systems until now. This way, 50 billion devices are predicted to be connected in 2020 [3].