BFEWS IOM MANUAL R0 160721
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Early Warning Systems
Early Warning Systems EWS are an important component of disaster risk management strategies. One of their
purpose is to issue warnings when a flood is likely or imminent. These systems use data from sensors to
measure water levels at strategic points in local water basins - like rivers and lakes, or flood defences like
dams and embankments - to forecast a potential flood event.
These EWS comprise of four major elements as depicted below –
The Bulfro Flood Early Warning System BFEWS is a Monitoring and Warning device - and thereby constitutes
one of the above key elements of such systems.
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Smart Cities and BFEWS
The Smart Cities Mission promotes the Climate Smart Cities assessment program. Under its Water
Management theme, it drives the Flood/Water Stagnation and Risk Management requirements.
The BFEWS has been developed to address these requirements. It is an IoT-based Monitoring and Warning
system, that continuously monitors the surface levels of water bodies such as canals, lakes and rivers which
lie close to or pass through a city.
The system is telemetry-enabled, which wirelessly communicates with the control station servers of the local
governing bodies. Data from BFEWS is used to generate alerts which enable the local administration to take
preventive actions. This helps to mitigate the risk of damages to life and property that could otherwise lead
to serious consequences.
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Bulfro’s technological prowess
The Bulfro engineering team develops products which are based on state-of-the-art technology.
Bulfro products are IoT-enabled devices which adhere to the globally accepted MQTT protocol. MQTT gives
flexibility in communication patterns and acts purely as a pipe for binary data. It is better suited to constrained
environments than HTTP, provides mechanisms for asynchronous communication, and runs on IP.
To further enhance the product capabilities Bulfro, deploys Edge computing. This is a distributed computing
framework that brings enterprise applications closer to the data sources such as our IoT devices or local edge
servers. This proximity to data at its source helps to deliver strong business benefits, including faster insights,
improved response times and better bandwidth availability.
