Flood risk management – Software Mind becomes an EU project part

Software Mind has become involved in the EU-subsidised WeSenseIt project. This aims to develop flood forecasting and warning software supporting hydrological communication and crisis management.

Besides high-volume physical sensor data, the project also uses the power of human observation as an essential part of an early warning system. Participants take measurements using new apps currently being developed by the project, and send information and images by mobile phone. The new technology is being tested in three European regions with high flood potential: Doncaster (UK), Delft (Netherlands) and Alto Adriatico (Italy).

During the execution of this project phase, Software Mind’s role was to provide a scalable supporting architecture via Big-Data tools, and collect large amounts of data from a large number of hydrological and meteorological sensors, mobile apps, social networks and external systems. Software Mind’s project team also integrated the components provided by other partners and was responsible for the integration with external systems.

The major system components for which Software Mind’s project team was responsible:

• Sensor Integration Layer – large scale data collection from sensors and social networks
• Scalable service layer (WeSenseIt API) – based on an HBase cluster
• Apache CloudStack-based cloud computing infrastructure – scalable IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform
• Scalable backend for mobile apps
• Geospatial event processing engine – CEP (Complex Event Processing)
• Local and mobile warning subscription system (GeoNotifications)

Technologies involved include Hadoop, HBase, OpenTSDB (Open Time Series DB), HIVE, Apache CloudStack, geospatial data management technologies (PostGIS, Geohash), large-scale natural language processing, STORM (scalable real-time analytics), hydrological model integration, and sensor communication standards (SensorML, O&M, WaterML, and Internet of Things).

Focused on development and innovation, Software Mind is often ahead of trends when it comes to implementing cutting-edge technologies. The participation in the project is a token of recognition for the Software Mind team and the best possible proof of the company’s expertise in delivering successful business projects.