The devastating flood disaster of July 2021 went down in German history as a serious tragedy. At least 134 people died after extreme rainfall in the Ahr valley, and thousands of houses were destroyed. According to the University of Bonn, it was the largest flood ever measured on the Ahr River.
Geographer Rainer Bell from exactly that university and his colleague Michael Dietze from the Georg-August University in Göttingen are researching a system so that such a flood catastrophe will not happen again. They installed three seismometers on a slope in Müsch, in the Ahr Valley – in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Rhineland-Palatinate – under leaves and branches. To do this, the earthquake sensors cooperate with a sensor that is buried in the ground. Vibrations in the slope are to be measured, which can be viewed directly on a laptop.
“This applies above all to movements in the earth. However, the sensors are so sensitive that they even detect walkers, cyclists or cars driving across the street on the other side of the Ahufer,” Bell told WDR. The geographer Dietze continues: “Even the water that flows through the Ahr already generates small vibrations. And these vibrations become stronger the more water flows or when the current is so strong that it washes rocks with it, for example.”
The distance of the said Ahr flood would have been recognizable with the help of the seismometer at a distance of 1.5 kilometers. Its speed would also have been measurable, Dietze told SWR a few months ago. According to this, the researchers could have seen the tidal wave and its intensity about half an hour beforehand. As a result, such a system could provide important information for flood centers, according to Dietze.
All Ahr gauges were swept away by the immense flood of 2021, causing the gauge network to fail very early. This should not happen through the use of earthquake sensors. Because the researchers want to set up an entire network of sensors that can detect a possible, increasing risk of flooding at an early stage. But they are still at the very beginning of their project. The first thing to do is to get the necessary funds together. They are also looking for employees to evaluate the results.
Sources: WDR, SWR
