Early warning system for underpasses in the Municipality of Battipaglia

A monitoring and early warning system is being installed for a new railway underpass in the Municipality of Battipaglia, which will be useful for inhibiting circulation in case of flooding; this is a situation that could occur during extreme flood events that are more and more frequent. On behalf of GBL Costruzioni SUD srl, CAE is installing the system which consists of:

- a hydrometric station, for monitoring the level on the Tusciano river;

- a control station, located near the underpass, for detecting the water level in the underpass and activating traffic lights, sirens and barriers;

- a data acquisition and management control centre, located in the Municipality of Battipaglia.

The station installed on the bridge in Via del Centenario will constantly detect the hydrometric level of the Tusciano river and, in addition to sending the data to the municipal control centre, upon exceeding default critical thresholds, it will transmit these measurements to the control station located near the underpass.

The station will be connected to 3 piezometric sensors installed in the lowest point of the underpass and at the drafting pit of the pumps dedicated to draining excess water; these sensors are necessary to detect the water level in the two spots and thus to be able to issue alerts when default critical thresholds are exceeded. Therefore, this station will take care of activating traffic lights and sirens connected to it on the basis of alarm logics linked to the measurements observed both by the station on the Tusciano river and by the piezometric sensors directly connected to it.

When the first threshold exceeding is communicated, the system will turn on a fixed yellow light on the 2 traffic lights at the entrances of the underpass. When the second critical threshold is exceeded, the red lights and the 2 associated sirens will be activated, to produce an additional sound alert, as well as visual, and subsequently, when the acoustic signal continues for 5 minutes and after appropriate evacuation of the underpass, the mobile barriers will be activated to block circulation.

In addition to the aforementioned local alert functions that lead to traffic inhibition, the field stations will send alert text messages directly to the technicians in charge of handling the emergency, in order to promptly inform them of the course of the flood event. In addition, the stations, which will be equipped with both a main data communication module via UMTS/GPRS and a secondary backup module via satellite, will also send the measurements observed to the acquisition centre located in the Municipality of Battipaglia, equipped with a workstation operating CAE programs for data acquisition and visualization.



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