Flood Rescue Research Articles

Agile Decision-Making as an Alternative for Decision Making’s Complexities in Information Management to Flood Rescue and Recovery: A Systematic Literature Review

There are several decision-making complexities that must be addressed in information management of flood rescue and recovery. All of these complexities lead to several complications, such as slow rescue operations, a rise in the number of victims, and numerous other flaws. As a result, in order to accomplish optimal decision making, the "agile concept" must be adopted. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the complexities faced by decision makers and identify the factors of agile decision making for an enhanced effectiveness of information management in flood rescue and recovery. 79 relevant articles published between 2014 to 2023 have been collected to go through systematic literature review. It includes the previous studies of complexities for information management in flood rescue and recovery Next, the findings showed that there eight significant factors of agile decision making that can enhance information management effectiveness in flood rescue and recovery. The factors are integrated collaboration, virtual knowledge, data quality, leadership role, person abilities, cost allocation, community engagement and real time data. The findings of this study further show that agile decision making can be alternative for reducing complexities of decision making by enhancing effectiveness of information management in flood rescue and recovery. The results of this study can be used as the fundamental to develop an effective model of agile decision making to enhance information management in flood rescue and recovery.

Police reforms in India: A Human Rights Concern

Abstract The police, an integral component of the justice system, are primarily tasked with maintaining law and order, particularly through the enforcement of criminal codes. According to the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedures in 1929, a policeman is an individual employed by the state to perform duties that, if desired, could have been undertaken voluntarily. Today, the term “police” refers to the civil executive force of a state entrusted with maintaining public order and enforcing regulations for crime prevention and apprehension. In contemporary times, the role of the police extends beyond crime prevention and detection to encompass various welfare activities such as assisting in traffic management, crowd control at public gatherings, aiding fire brigades and flood rescue operations, and resolving minor disputes among the public. However, this paper does not solely focus on the definition of the police. Instead, it provides an overview of police reforms in India, highlighting the challenges faced by the Indian police system and proposing solutions to address these challenges. Additionally, it explores the legal standpoint on police reforms. Keyword– Indian Police, Public Order, Royal Commission, Criminal Codes, Traffic Management

Uttar Pradesh Police: Reforms and Employment Status

An essential part of the state's legal system is the police force. Most people associate the word "police" with state personnel whose duty it is to maintain order, especially when it comes to the ordinary application of the penal code.More than just keeping the peace and catching criminals, today's police officers also help with traffic laws enforcement, crowd control at events like rallies and fairs, supporting emergency services like the fire department and flood rescue teams, and mediating small disputes between members of the public. An essential component of the state's justice system is the police. The word "police" mostly refers to state employees whose job it is to uphold law and order, particularly through the execution of the regular criminal code. In addition to preventing crimes and apprehending offenders, police officers nowadays also assist with other welfare tasks such as assisting with traffic regulations, managing crowds at public events and meetings, supporting fire departments and flood rescue teams, and assisting members of the public in resolving small conflicts.

A Secure Authentication Protocol Supporting Efficient Handover for UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly pivotal in operations such as flood rescue, wildfire surveillance, and covert military endeavors, with their integration into the Internet of Things (IoT) networks broadening the scope of services they provide. Amidst this expansion, security concerns for UAVs have come to the forefront, particularly in open communication environments where they face authentication challenges and risks of sensitive data, including location information, being exposed to unauthorized parties. To address these issues, we propose a secure and lightweight authentication scheme that combines the use of anonymity mechanisms and Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). Specifically, we employ pseudo- and temporary identities to maintain the anonymity of UAVs, while also utilizing PUF technology to strengthen the security of Ground Station Servers (GSSs) against physical threats. Rigorous validation through ProVerif and the Random Oracle (ROR) Model indicates our scheme’s superior performance over existing protocols in terms of both efficiency and security.

Usability Survey on Integrated Support System for Flood Disaster Management

Recovery and response in managing flood disaster requires effective communication system for information sharing and coordination between agencies. However, the flood rescue and relief operations in Malaysia is yet inefficient due to decentralised management system between humanitarian relief organisations. Hence, this study attempt to contribute through information technology solution by integrating roles of different agencies such as Ministry of Health (KKM), Malaysian Department of Social Welfare (JKM), Malaysian Meteorological Department (JMM) as well as nonprofit organisations (NGOs) in managing flood victim. Therefore, Waterfall methodology has been adopted in developing an online flood integrated support system for mitigating, preparing, responding, and recovering flood management process. The system acts as a centralised platform for flood rescue voluntary, disseminates flood-related information updates, and manage flood victim health status particularly in the Segamat district of Johore. An online usability survey by purposive sampling has been conducted with 30 public citizens representing prospectives system users. In addition, three individuals from flood management agencies are selected to represent the system administrator for evaluating the system usefulness through USE questionnaire. Findings for the usability survey suggested that the system usability is satisfactory. Likewise, while the admin features have been satisfactorily rated based on the USE questionnaires with some suggestions for future improvement. Extending the system features in managing registration and aid for the victims in the flood evacuation centre is recommended for future work.

Deep reinforcement learning for optimal rescue path planning in uncertain and complex urban pluvial flood scenarios

An urban pluvial flood is a devastating, costly natural disaster requiring effective rescue path planning to mitigate the loss of lives and property. The inherent uncertainty and complexity of the risks associated with urban flooding limit the ability to plan optimal rescue paths that prioritize both timeliness and safety. This study addresses the challenge by proposing an innovative assessment methodology to output risk values and probability representing safety and timeliness in each passable area while simulating real-world flood scenarios. Furthermore, the paper develops a pioneering path-planning algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning, incorporating improved stochastic reward exploitation and heterogeneous reward exploration mechanisms to function in a simulation rescue path-planning scenario with uncertainty and complexity. According to the findings, the proposed algorithm outperforms current state-of-the-art algorithms in converging to the optimal path, fully sampling, and running efficiency. The study contributes to theoretical progress on urban pluvial flood rescue, deep reinforcement learning, risk assessment, and decision intelligence while offering practical implications for smart cities, emergency management, and optimizing real-world problems by employing artificial intelligence.

Helicopter Rescue for Flood Disaster: Scheduling, Simulation, and Evaluation

Frequent severe floods have caused great losses to urban safety and the economy, which raises high requirements for the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency rescue. Due to the flood characteristics, flood rescue requires a more rapid responder and decision-making compared with other kinds of disaster rescue. In recent years, aviation emergency rescue (AER) has attracted much attention for flood applications. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of AER for flood disasters, the present study proposes a conceptual model of helicopter AER scheduling and develops a simulation system of helicopter AER scheduling using multiple agents. Seven elements are considered in the conceptual model: helicopters, the command-and-control center, temporary take-off/landing points, mission demand points, resettlement points, loading points, and unloading points. Furthermore, process-oriented and object-oriented scheduling rules are developed as the general guide for scheduling. In order to efficiently simulate and evaluate an AER mission (assisting the decision maker), the simulation system is designed with multiple agents and a user interface, which can quickly load mission settings, run the simulation, and collect data for further evaluation. A standardized mission makespan is adopted as the evaluation index. Based on that, the minimum integrated index can be derived to finally assess the different rescue schemes and choose the best. In the case study, the comparison results indicate that the rescue efficiency of large helicopters (Mi-26 in the case) could be limited by the capabilities of loading points and unloading points. This problem is solved by scheduling small/medium-size helicopters to transfer the personnel. Alternately, two types of helicopters can be used: one for passenger transfer and the other for goods/material transfer. Anyway, the analyses in the case study illustrate the correlation between effectiveness and scheduling, which demonstrates the significance of decision-making. By using the proposed scheduling and modeling methods, the simulation system can be served as a convenient decision-making support tool for practical rescue applications.

GIS Flood Prone Agricultural Land East Java Using Multi-Method Attribute Utility Theory

East Java has various regional conditions. The condition of the area certainly has the potential for disasters that have a significant impact on the agricultural sector. Flood is one of the factors that damage agricultural land. Flood risk management plays an important role in guiding the government in making timely and appropriate decisions for flood rescue and relief. The purpose of this research is a study of flood risk assessment in the agricultural sector in East Java using Multi Attribute Utility Theory. The Multi Attribute Utility Theory is used to solve problems related to spatial planning and disaster management because it is systematic and suitable for solving complex problems such as the agricultural sector. The results showed that the agricultural land areas in East Java with the category of very flood-prone include Bojonegoro, Lamongan, Tuban, and Sidoarjo Regencies. Furthermore, the results of this study were visualized by mapping flood risk using a GIS. This can be used for efforts in flood disaster management. This research is expected to assist policy making at the Department of Agriculture and Food Security in monitoring flood-prone agricultural land in order to minimize the occurrence of flood disasters in the agricultural sector.

Post‐flood infectious disease prevention and control: Current scenario in Pakistan

Post‐flood infectious disease prevention and control: Current scenario in Pakistan

Experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of lifeguards from Australia and the United Kingdom toward lifeguard involvement in flood mitigation and response

IntroductionFlooding causes significant mortality and morbidity, with impacts expected to increase with climate change. Ensuring adequate country-level flood mitigation and response capacity is key. Lifeguards, traditionally used for drowning prevention, may represent an additional workforce for flood emergency response. MethodsThrough an anonymous, online survey, we explored experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of a convenience sample of surf lifeguards from Australia and England towards lifeguards’ involvement in flood response. Respondents were recruited via Surf Life Saving Australia and Great Britain and had prior training in flood rescue. Analysis comprised descriptive statistics and thematic coding of free-text responses. ResultsForty-four responses were received (93.2% male, 34.1% aged 50–59 years; 61.4% from Australia; 61.4% with ≥16 years lifesaving experience). Twenty-nine respondents (65.9%) self-reported having previously responded to flooding, 15 of which responded prior to receiving flood training. Lifeguards commonly reported being involved in the flood response phase (n = 28). Respondents identified rescue skills (n = 43; 97.7%), awareness of water conditions (n = 40; 90.9%), and radio communication protocols (n = 40; 90.9%) as relevant in a flood scenario. Respondents broadly agreed lifeguards were an asset in flood response due to transferrable skills, including to bolster existing capacity. However, respondents noted need for greater recognition, for involvement earlier in flood response and for flood-specific training and equipment prior to deployment.Discussion & Conclusions: Lifeguards represent a willing and able workforce to support flood mitigation and response, some of whom are already being tasked with such work. Provision of flood-specific training and equipment are vital, as is addressing interoperability tensions.

Study and Design Analysis of Hazard Removal and Reinforcement Scheme of a Bridge Diversion Sluice

Most of the existing sluices in China have been in operation for more than 40 years, and the aging problem is becoming increasingly prominent. The selection of reinforcement schemes for sluices in vulnerable conditions is of great significance to the whole project. A reasonable reinforcement scheme can ensure their safe operation and reduce unnecessary resource investment. This study focuses on the diversion gate of a bridge in China that through aging has emerged insufficient capacity of downstream energy dissipation and scour prevention, severe scour of the diversion dike foundation, and insufficient flood control and rescue capacity. Two reinforcement schemes are examined by analyzing the engineering parameters of the bridge diversion sluice and the necessity of engineering construction, namely, raising the flood discharge level and increasing the width of the overflow section. In this study, Super Decisions software was first used to simulate the reinforcement scheme of the bridge diversion sluice, calculate the weight of the factors, and obtain the optimization scheme from the two aforementioned reinforcement schemes, which was based on the analytic network process (ANP), and the related factors affecting the reinforcement scheme of the bridge diversion sluice are determined and evaluated. The relevant calculation and analyses of the optimization scheme are conducted using ANSYS finite‐element software. The selection process of reinforcement scheme for such sluices provides a reference for other similar projects.

ECHO: Developing a multi-hazard incident risk assessment tool for swiftwater and flood rescue

Currently there is no multi-hazard risk assessment tool for determining the level of complexity to swiftwater and flood rescue incidents. Traditionally, the International Scale of River Difficulty is used but it is primarily for whitewater paddlers for use in a recreational context, without much consideration to the multitude of hazards faced in swiftwater and flood rescue environments. In response to this gap, the ECHO risk assessment tool has been developed and undergone initial testing. This tool provides for simple and rapid codification of multiple hazards and response considerations and is globally applicable. The tool also assigns a final risk assessment colour making the interpretation of the assessment easy to understand and communicate. Though the proposed tool shows potential, further research is needed before it should be operationalised. KEY WORDS: Assessment, echo, flood, rescue, risk, swiftwater, tool, srirac.

A Flood Rescue System Based on Android Application

In order to save the lives of a people, identification of the area and rescue team is needed. Along with a trained rescue team a quick and relevant intimation system is also needed so that the rescue operation can be carried out quickly. In this study, we propose a web based and Android based Flood Rescue System. Flood Rescue System collects data from user from the affected site and analyses the data to detect the disastrous situation. After knowing the location of affected area, the Flood Rescue System finds out shortest path from affected area to the current position of rescue team and provides the path to the rescue team.

Formal Modeling, Proving, and Model Checking of a Flood Warning, Monitoring, and Rescue System-of-Systems

Floods after monsoon rains are frequent disasters that affect millions of lives in Pakistan. Human lives are lost, agriculture economies are destroyed, and livestock animals, houses, fruit farms, and crops are lost which are the major livelihoods of thousands of people in Punjab. Each year there are heavy rains in the monsoon season and, due to global warming, there is the rapid melting of snow in northern glaciers; these factors subsequently cause floods. There is also loss of life due to the spread of waterborne diseases and snake bites. Flood monitoring provides early detection of a flood and the calculation of its intensity, which results in reduced human life losses and economic losses. Most casualties are caused by the lack of timely real-time, authentic information about the high-risk areas, and flood intensity, speed, and direction. Therefore, the proposed approach is centered on formal modeling and verification of safety and liveness properties of flood monitoring perceivers. Each flood perceiver has several sensors. It requires the collection of information starting from the flood perceiver, observer, and environmental forecast. This information is processed to determine the flood intensity level. We have developed a CP-Nets’ formal model and model-checked it. We have verified the safety and liveness properties of correctness by exhaustive verification of the system using model-based proof obligations (Event-B method using Rodin). Our objective in this research is to propose a correct, reliable, and efficient flood warning, monitoring, and rescue (WMR) SoS based on formal methods. We have used formal modeling and model-checking based on state-of-the-art hierarchical CP-Nets supported by exhaustive formal proof obligations of Event-B.

Evaluation of Governance Systems for Response and Recovery Measures During Flood Disaster in Niger State, Nigeria

Situated around the confluence of Niger and Benue Rivers, Niger State experiences annual flood episodes. The Niger, Benue and Gurara Rivers overspill their channels annually during the wet season thereby causing damages. If well planned, rescue and recovery processes should protect the lives and property of flood- prone areas, reduce vulnerability to flood hazards, safeguard the health of rescued people, promote social learning among affected persons by reoccurring floods and provide better understanding of the local economy to determine how different interventions may affect the local people. Against this backdrop, the study examined the rescue and recovery measures from Niger State flood disasters and the impacts of floods on the entire state. Specifically, the study seeks to identify formal and informal organizations involved in flood rescue and recovery measures during flood disasters in Niger state. This study was survey- based research and the data used for the study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Two sets of questionnaire were used to obtain information. The first set centred on information concerning households on their perception of emergency institutional responses/ rescue operations during flood disasters in the study area while the second set of questionnaire were administered on both public and private emergency management institutions and agencies. In all, a total of six hundred (600) copies of questionnaire were administered in the twenty five (25) local government Areas of Niger State but five hundred and eight (582) copies were successfully completed and retrieved from the respondents. Statistical techniques used for data analysis and testing of hypotheses include the student T- test, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), Factor analysis, principal component analysis and Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC). The computer programme employed for the PCA was statistical package for social sciences (SPSS), version 20 for window The result of data analysis revealed that the rescue and recovery operations have a mean and standard deviation (SD) of 1.59 + .492 indicating that the level of effectiveness in rescue and recovery measure during flooding were ineffective at 231(39.7%) The study recommends the critical need for synergy between public and NGO/CBOs emergency management operation, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of rescue operations, maximize the use of available resources during flooding and devote more resources to the medical needs and restoration of livelihood activities of residents to enhance early recovery of normal life. Keywords: Evaluation, Governance System, Response, Recovery, Flood Disaster, Niger State. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-22-11 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

An IoT and AI based Flood Monitoring and Rescue System

An IoT and AI based Flood Monitoring and Rescue System

Water level prediction from social media images with a multi-task ranking approach

Floods are among the most frequent and catastrophic natural disasters and affect millions of people worldwide. It is important to create accurate flood maps to plan (offline) and conduct (real-time) flood mitigation and flood rescue operations. Arguably, images collected from social media can provide useful information for that task, which would otherwise be unavailable. We introduce a computer vision system that estimates water depth from social media images taken during flooding events, in order to build flood maps in (near) real-time. We propose a multi-task (deep) learning approach, where a model is trained using both a regression and a pairwise ranking loss. Our approach is motivated by the observation that a main bottleneck for image-based flood level estimation is training data: it is difficult and requires a lot of effort to annotate uncontrolled images with the correct water depth. We demonstrate how to efficiently learn a predictor from a small set of annotated water levels and a larger set of weaker annotations that only indicate in which of two images the water level is higher, and are much easier to obtain. Moreover, we provide a new dataset, named DeepFlood, with 8145 annotated ground-level images, and show that the proposed multi-task approach can predict the water level from a single, crowd-sourced image with ≈11 cm root mean square error.

Duty or safety? Exploring emergency service personnel's perceptions of risk and decision-making when driving through floodwater

Vehicle-related flood fatalities and rescues due to driving through floodwater are a significant emergency management issue for emergency services. To reduce fatalities, injuries, and costs associated with this risky driving behaviour it is essential to develop strategies to stop or reduce the incidence of people driving through floodwater. In Australia, people are told not to enter floodwater – on foot or in vehicles – with the phrase ‘If it's flooded, forget it’ widely used in official messaging. As first responders responsible for floods, storms and tsunamis, Australian State Emergency Service (SES) personnel are working in flood conditions regularly and are considered an occupationally ‘at-risk’ group for driving through floodwater. Although SES agencies across states and territories in Australia are independently led, they typically promote policies of not entering floodwater to their personnel. Such policies are important for meeting duty of care obligations to employees, for protection of assets (vehicles and equipment), and for upholding organisational reputation (leading by example). This study was undertaken to explore the behaviour of driving through floodwater by SES personnel. The study explored the characteristics of those who have and have not driven through floodwater, and then used detailed situations in which SES personnel entered floodwater in vehicles to analyse their perception of risks, the conditions and contexts in which they entered floodwater, and to identify what influenced their decision to enter.Following an earlier systematic literature review, a detailed online questionnaire was developed and administered to SES personnel from a single agency. Data from 670 respondents indicated that 54.8% had driven through floodwater in the previous two years, and a number of differences in the profile of those who had/had not driven through floodwater were identified. Those more likely to have driven through floodwater included males, volunteer personnel with longer lengths of service, those doing more driving hours per week, those deployed to work in flood conditions, and those with current flood rescue qualifications. The location type, water depth, and water velocity were conditions that contributed more to perception of risk at the time personnel drove through the floodwater. Detailed information about an experience of entering floodwater was obtained from 201 respondents who had driven through floodwater in SES vehicles, and six factors relating to the decision to drive through floodwater were extracted. ‘Organisational training and safety’, ‘External locus of control’ and ‘Absence of risk signals’ were identified as having the greatest influence on risk perception leading to decisions to drive through floodwater. The findings of the study have a number of practical implications for the improvement of occupational safety management; such as upgrading risk assessments strategies, reviewing workplace health and safety policies, enhancing training, increasing skills and knowledge of emergency services personnel about floodwater hazard situations, and improving internal flood risk communication.

Flood Rescue Boat as One of the Alternatives in Indonesia Waterways

Flooding is the most frequent disaster that hit Indonesia, especially in big cities with poor urban planning. Infrastructure damage has occurred, the fatalities which are likely to occur, both during floods and after floods. So far, the fatalities caused by floods are very difficult to control and even tend to increase. This condition is getting worse with the lack of facilities that support the evacuation process of flood victims. The aim of the study was to design a lifeboat that was able to evacuate flood victims and be able to overcome other problems that might arise when the evacuation process runs more efficiently. By collecting data from several agencies related to flood mitigation problems, interviews with experts, as well as several other references, it is hoped that relevant data can be collected, which can provide solutions to the problems faced. The stages of the research included the creation of concepts and the design of a hull shape that was adjusted for a flood rescue boat, a boat with high stability. By using of the Maxsurf V.8.5 and Hydromax V.8.5 program, it is expected that the design process and calculation of boat stability can be done more quickly and accurately. The results of research for several areas affected by floods, the existence of a rescue boat as a means to evacuate victims is urgently needed. So that the provision of a multifunctional flood rescue boat is the perfect solution to overcome this problem. To carry out this function, the stability of the rescue boat flood is one of the factors that must be considered so that the evacuation process can be carried out safely.

The thermal demands of flood rescue and impacts on task performance

The aim of this study was to determine the thermal demand of simulated Flood Rescue tasks and impacts on performance. Ten participants undertook two simulations: ‘Cold’ (4 °C) -participants stood in knee height moving water (4.8 km·h−1), with simulated wind and rain for 60 min. ‘Warm’ (20 °C) - participants performed 6x7 min walking in knee height moving water (3.2 km·h−1), pulling 10 kg. Grip strength, manual dexterity, and jump height were measured pre and post. The cold resulted in cooling of the great toe and finger (9.98 [0.84]°C and 10.38 [8.21–12.1] °C, respectively). Jump height, manual dexterity and grip strength fell by 20%, 22% and ∼13%, respectively. In the ‘Warm’: heart rates were 157 (19) b·min−1, oxygen consumption 30.62 (7.83) mL.kg−1·min−1, and sweat loss 1.06 (0.31) L. There were no differences in the physical tests. Flood Rescue represents significant, but different, challenges. Remaining static in the cold resulted in peripheral neuromuscular cooling, whilst exercising in the warm resulted in a significant thermal challenge. Practitioner Summary: Little is known about the physical requirements, thermal profiles and optimum personal protective equipment for flood rescue. Flood rescue represents significant challenges. In the cold, emergency responders may be incapacitated by peripheral cooling. In the heat, they may be incapacitated by heat-related exhaustion. Consideration should be given to these risks.