Coastal alerting IoT system in response to high tides and turbulent weather

Abstract

This research paper discusses the design and implementation of a coastal alerting system in response to tide levels at the shore and turbulent weather conditions based on the Internet of Things. There are two IoT platforms used in this project to showcase the results from the model namely Thingspeak and the Blynk Application. The proposed model setup comprises of a cylindrical structure with a water inlet, a float, a microcontroller circuit configuration with an ultrasonic sensor as well as a large water container to simulate onshore conditions. The water level readings are measured by the ultrasonic sensor as one of the inputs for the microcontroller. This is achieved using the float placed in the cylindrical structure that is displaced by the water that flows in through the water inlet. The ultrasonic sensor which is placed above the float measures the distance between itself and the float with the change in the water level. The other inputs comprise of the weather information from the weather API service provided by Openweathermap.org. The microcontroller makes decisions on the weather situation at the shorefront based on a set of algorithms that take all the inputs into consideration. In addition, data on nearby storms are pulled in from another API service powered by Darksky.net. This is done so as to issue appropriate responses through the IoT platforms indicating the nature of the situation on the shorefront and the possibility of storms in the vicinity; either where it can be deemed safe for public beach goers to stay there or to evacuate to a higher level away from the beachfront.