An entropy method for floodplain monitoring network design

In recent years an increasing number of flood-related fatalities has highlighted the necessity of improving flood risk management to reduce human and economic losses. In this framework, monitoring of flood-prone areas is a key factor for building a resilient environment. In this paper a method for designing a floodplain monitoring network is presented. A redundant network of cheap wireless sensors (GridStix) measuring water depth is considered over a reach of the River Dee (UK), with sensors placed both in the channel and in the floodplain. Through a Three Objective Optimization Problem (TOOP) the best layouts of sensors are evaluated, minimizing their redundancy, maximizing their joint information content and maximizing the accuracy of the observations. A simple raster-based inundation model (LISFLOOD-FP) is used to generate a synthetic GridStix data set of water stages. The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) that is used for hydraulic model building is the globally and freely available SRTM DEM.