Low-Cost, Low-Energy, Wireless Hydrological Monitoring Platform: Design, Deployment, and Evaluation

Abstract

Climate change has increasingly been considered responsible for irregular weather patterns leading to many environmental hazards and catastrophes. Coping with these conditions and providing effective solutions require monitoring and collecting data of various hydrological parameters and events in high spatial and temporal resolutions, which is generally limited by the cost and energy requirements of the monitoring devices. In this work, we push the limit of the current low-cost data acquisition capabilities by developing the HydroMon3: a hydrological monitoring platform that collects, stores, and transmits high temporal resolution data reliably and accurately, and capable of interfacing different types of sensors. The modular design is driven by utilizing the recent burst in commercially available IoT-related electronics modules to minimize the cost and maximize flexibility, while applying various hardware and software techniques to ensure reliability and energy performance. Stream stage and tipping bucket monitoring units based on the HydroMon3 platform were deployed to more than 20 locations in two different watersheds, and their performance over a 6-month season was evaluated. Collected data for a number of storms provided important insights for linking hydrological events and showed substantial variability in the monitored parameters both spatially and temporally, which were compared with local data records and confirmed that conventional hydrological data acquisition methods are under representative of the actual events. Field-proven results demonstrate the units’ ability to maintain autonomous operation from several months for the stream stage monitors to years for the rainfall gauges using of-the-shelf AA batteries.