Flood detection and prediction

in Ethiopia using Recurrent

Neural Networks
Research Proposal for Mini-Project

Submitted by:

Jimma Institute of Technology

Jimma University

November,2020
 Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................ 3
2. Statement of the problem.......................................................................................................5
3. Objective of the study............................................................................................................. 6
Specific objectives.............................................................................................................. 6
4. Methodology........................................................................................................................... 6
Study Area........................................................................................................................................... 6
Study Period...................................................................................................................... 6
Study Design..................................................................................................................................................7
4.4. Study Variables................................................................................................................................8
The proposed System Model..............................................................................................8
Tools and Materials...........................................................................................................................9
5. Planning and Time Schedule..................................................................................................9
6. Estimated Research Budget...................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................ 11

2
 1. Introduction
Due to global warming the danger of flooding and other natural disasters are becoming frequent
throughout the world. Flooding is one of the natural disasters which becomes the cause of human
life loss and economic crisis. It occurs due to heavy raining within a short period of time or
continuous raining for several days. Ethiopia had many locations which are prone to flood risks
occurred both due to flash and riverine flooding events. In Ethiopia the frequency of flooding at
various parts of the country is increasing from time to time due to natural and anthropogenic
factors. There must be a flood risk management and controlling mechanisms in order to prevent
the periodic increase in the flooding events [17].

In most cases floods occur in Ethiopia as a result of prolonged heavy rainfall causing rivers to
overflow and inundate areas along the river banks in lowland plains. Among the major river
flood-prone areas are parts of Oromia and Afar regions lying along the upper, middle and down-
stream plains of the Awash River; parts of Somali region along the Wabe Shebelle, Genale and
Dawa Rivers; low-lying areas of Gambella along the Baro, Gilo, Alwero and Akobo Rivers;
down-stream areas along the Omo and Bilate Rivers in SNNPR and the extensive floodplains
surrounding Lake Tana and the banks of Gumara, Rib and Megech Rivers in Amhara.

Flash floods occur in lowland areas when excessive rains fall in adjacent highland areas. Flash
floods mostly affect areas including Central, Southern and Western Tigray region; North and
South Wollo, West Gojjam and Oromia zones in Amhara region; parts of Zone 1, Zone 2 and
Zone 4 in Afar region; North Shewa zone in Oromia region; Wolayita, Hadiya, Siltie, Guraghe
and Sidama zones in SNNPR; Jigjiga Town in Somali region and Dire Dawa City
Administration. This type of flood is characterized by sudden onset with little lead time for early
warning and often resulting in considerable damage on lives, livelihoods and property.

Even though the mathematical modeling of flood is complex there are research results which
show promising results in advancement of flood forecasting models which provide better
performance and cost-effective solutions. Today the data-driven machine learning and deep
learning algorithms are well known algorithms in representing the complex real world
environment. The development and implementation of flood prediction and detection models
will have significance for the government by providing reliable and effective information which
enables the government for protection, prevention and preparedness for mitigating the risks of
flooding.

There are different techniques used by researchers to model the physical scenario of flooding.
Physical based model [1, 2, 3, 4] are the oldest and tradition ways of flood modeling techniques
which are tedious in computation time and lack of reliability and effectiveness in prediction. In
addition to the physical models data-driven models are also been studied for a long time for
flooding prediction and such techniques are more reliable and cost effective in terms of their
computation cost and implementation cost.

The data-driven approaches for modeling flooding are divided in to two categories. The
statistical based data-driven approaches [5, 6, 7, 8, 9] use metrological and hydrological data
recorded for years and assimilate the flooding models based on statistical and scholastic event
modeling approach. Even though such statistical models are less in computation time and have
greater generalization capability they are reported to be unsuitable for short term prediction.

The other data-driven approach for modeling flood is based on classical machine learning
approaches and current state of the art deep learning neural networks. One of the biggest
advantages of the machine learning based flood modeling techniques is that they are not
knowledge based system like the statistical modeling techniques. The ML (machine learning)
model are well known for generalizability of the physical process and they are better in learning
with less complexity compared with the traditional physical and statistical based flood modeling
techniques. Researchers have compared the ML algorithms with classical algorithms [ 10, 11]
claiming ML models have better performance and accuracy compared with the traditional
techniques.

There are different ML algorithms studied for flood prediction e.g support vector machines
(SVM) [12], artificial neural networks (ANN) [13, 14], neuro-fuzzy inference systems [15, 16]
and many others. The classical machine learning algorithms such as ANN, SVM, decision trees,
neuro-fuzzy inference systems have their limitation. They learn from hand engineered features
which makes them less generalizable during test time. They need large amount of historic data to
improve their performance. In developing countries like Ethiopia where there is no digitally
recorded hydrologic and metrological data for long period of time it is not feasible to implement
flood prediction using classical ML algorithms. The other limitation of such systems is lack of
learning from time series information during training.

Nowadays deep learning algorithms which are advanced ML algorithms which fill the major
gaps in the classical ML are becoming popular in representing and learning the physical world.
These deep learning based algorithms are modeling some physical processes e.g image
classification, object detection and recognition tasks as par humans understand their surrounding
environment. Deep learning algorithms are good at representing the surrounding physical
environment with their non-linear function.

In this research we will implement an end to end flood prediction and detection system which
combines the existing hydrological and metrological data in a new innovative way using deep
learning models. The significance of this research is multifold. It contribute for reduction of
flooding risks, as information source for policy makers, reduction of human and economic loss
due to flood hazards. We will demonstrate one additional potential area where artificial
intelligence-based system can be used to solve the problems facing our community. During this
study we will also prepare a benchmark public dataset for flood prediction for future deep
learning-based research works.

2. Statement of the problem

Flooding during the rainy seasons of Ethiopia is the major problem for the community by
imposing different socio-economic crisis within the community. Flooding causes significant
damages to lives and livelihoods in different parts of the country. Soil erosion, land degradation,
ground water pollution and sanitation problems are some of the environmental impacts of
flooding. To sustain the development of the society which is impacted by time to time increasing
flood during the rainy season it needs an integrated real time and long-lasting flood control
mechanisms. Flood prediction and detection systems are the most commonly used mechanisms
in different parts of the world which provides useful information in forecasting flooding events
both in short-term and long-term. There are no such technologically assisted flood forecasting
systems in Ethiopia.
 3. Objective of the study
The aim of this study is to develop and implement an effective and robust end-to-end flood
detection and perdition system by collecting dataset which suits the deep learning algorithms to
be trained on.

Specific objectives
Assessment of factors which contribute to flooding at selected target sites

Collection of dataset and preparing benchmark public dataset for deep leaning algorithm
development for various application

Analyzing and processing the collected data

Evaluating and testing the developed model in real time data

4. Methodology
In this Section, the materials and methods used to collect the inputs data for the system to be
designed, the techniques and methods followed to design the flooding detection system are
clearly described. It also discusses the study area and data collection techniques. The flow chart
of the proposed research activities is shown in Fig.1.

Study Area
The research will be conducted in Jimma City and Upper Awash river areas. The reason for the
choosing these two areas is that Jimma City is affected by the flooding due Awetu river. The
university received requests from the city administration office about the solution to the flooding
problem of the river. The upper Awash area is an area which is affected severely almost every
year. The frequency of occurrence of flooding in this area due to Awash river is high. We would
like to address the community problems which are both at local and national level in this
research.

Study Period
This research will be conducted from December 2020 – November, 2021 including the data
collection period and system testing in real-world scenario.
Study Design
To acquire relevant data for the system to be designed, both primary and secondary sources of
data will be used and qualitative as well as quantitative research strategies will be employed. The
qualitative research method is used to access the damage caused by flooding, economically and
psychologically to the residents of the study area. The quantitative data will be collected for
input to model, to optimize and test the proposed system. The data to be collected will be
metrological and hydrological records of upto 30 years (from 1990 upto now). The data will be
collected form Ethiopian Mereology Agency and Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy and
the respective administration offices at kebele and zone level.

Data Collection

Data Preprocessing
and labelling

Design of the
CNN Model

Training the CNN

model

Testing the Model

Hardware
Implementation

Deploying the
Prototype

Fig.1. The flow chart of the activities of proposed research.

 4.4. Study Variables
The independent variables in this study consists of time, hydrological data of the rivers and
metrological data of the study area. The dependent variable is the accuracy of the flooding
detection system.

The proposed System Model

The Proposed method uses deep recurrent neural network to address the problem. The deep recurrent
neural Network, especially LSTM (Long short-term memory), is used to generate the flooding detection
system model. This method has not been used for flooding detection and it has a good efficient for
predicting models of time series data.

Metrological Warning Message

Data Preprocessing Prediction Model
Deep Recurrent
Hydrologica Neural Network
l Data

Metrological Data Preprocessing

Hydrological Data

Fig. 2. The proposed flooding Prediction Model

After collecting sufficient amount of data, the collected data will be labelled and preprocessed.
The preprocessing methods are used to normalize the data. The preprocessed data will be used
to train the deep recurrent neural network (DRNN) model. The data will be used to optimize the
prediction model. Data augmentation methods will be employed to enhance the prefromance of
the system. The trained DRNN flooding prediction model will be tested with real data. Once,
high level of prediction accuracy is obtained, the system will be implemented in hardware using
Arduino microprocessor. Finally, the developed system will be deployed at the selected sites, on
the upper stream of the river. The system can be initially tested by creating artificial flooding at
the selected sites.
 Tools and Materials
The proposed system analysis and implementation requires Laptop computer, Arduino
Microprocessor, IOT Sensors, water level sensors, and temperature sensors. The prediction
model will be designed using python programming language. The final deployment of the system
requires encasing structures for the sensors and microprocessor at the deployment site.

5. Planning and Time Schedule

Months (2020- 21)
S. Activities Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr May Jun Jul Aug Seb Oct Nov
No .
1 Literature review

2 Data Collection

Design and
3 implementation

System analysis
4 & testing

System optimization
5

6 Installation,
Demonstration, paper
writing and submission
for publication
 6. Estimated Research Budget

Unit Total Price

S.No Items Unit Quantity Price (birr)
1. Material Cost
1.1 128 GB Flash disk and No. 3
1.1 stationery
1.2 IOT Sensors No 8
1.3 Housing structures No. 2
for sensors
1.5 Mobile card No. 10

Sub-total

2. Transportation
2.1 Transportation to A.A
2.2 Taxi at A.A - -
Sub-total
3. Per diem
Per diem for data 3 persons for
3.1 collector No. 7 days
3.3 Per diem for data encoder and No. 3 persons for 6
labelling days
3.6 Final system Installation No. 3 persons 6
days
sub-total
Total sum
Grand total
(One hundred ten thousand ETB only)
Table 2: Cost breakdown of the proposed research.
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