Mobile Augmented Reality for flood events management

Abstract

The frequency of flood events worldwide has increased significantly over the past decades, and with it so has the need to employ information technologies able to help mobile workforces, both technicians and volunteers, during surveys in the emergency phases. In view of this, a client-server framework for the development of a mobile application that uses Augmented Reality (AR) was implemented. This platform, which increases visual perception of the real world merging additional information with the natural scene in real time, allows mobile workforces to more easily reach the most critical areas subject to flooding and rapidly make a decision on the level of flood protection. The performance of the prototype was evaluated on the Bradano river, located in the south-eastern Basilicata region (Italy), both in a real case study and in a simulated one. The obtained results show how the application represents an innovative tool compared to the existing ones, being it able to show, timely and continuously up-to-date, augmented information on various vulnerability scenarios during the emergency phases, helping both technical and non-technical operators to quickly intervene, containing or preventing secondary disasters, thus reducing deaths and injuries, and limiting the resulting economic losses and social disruption.