Floud
Floud is a ultra low cost flood detection sensor, connected to the cloud. It connects to GSM networks to warn the user of when water infiltrations begin to happen at their property. Statistically, when a flood occurs, 10 minutes preadvance can make the difference between saving one’s possessions or losing them to the waters. Such matters are of vital importance, even in areas with low flood occurrence, where the occasional flood can still cause very relevant damage (Tallinn 2013, Pärnu 2011, etc.)
The strength of Floud is on three main fronts:
– Private Users: get early warnings when the property (or the neighboring ones) are being flooded.
Upload the data to the cloud and get information of flooding status of important areas.
– Municipalities and City Councils: through the inexpensive installation of a network of such devices, it is possible to have unprecedented real-time feedback on the flooding status of urban areas. Existing models can be augmented using hindcast methods.
– Research: networks of flood sensors are rarely available even in areas which are subject to frequent floods. Research on the topic is highly publishable material.
The extremely low cost of the device opens the doors to many different business models.
Knowledge needed to team: Electronics skills are needed to put together a working prototype within the 3 days, marketing and business skills would be needed to analyze the idea from the economical feasibility viewpoint.
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