Flood Water Protection in Buenos Aires

The Arroyo Medrano is the second-largest channeled stream running through Buenos Aires. In cases of heavy rainfall, it overflows its banks and causes considerable material damage. When the retention basin, which had been specially built to collect large quantities of water during strong precipitation events, also overflowed, the government decided to have an alarm system installed to monitor the water level in the basin.

Background

The Arroyo Medrano is the second-largest channeled stream that runs directly through Buenos Aires, the largest urban area in Argentina.

In cases of heavy rainfall, it overflows its banks, floods roads, and often causes considerable material damage. To prevent further flooding, the government built a retention basin with a volume of 300,000 m³ to help regulate the discharge of the Medrano during strong rainfall events.
As it happened that even the retention basin overflowed during an extreme precipitation event, the government had a system installed to monitor the water level in the basin. This system triggers an alarm as soon as a defined threshold is reached.

Monitoring Solution

• Water level measurement with the contact-free radar sensor OTT RLS
• Remote data transmission with ADCON RTU A755 via GSM/GPRS
• Power supply via integrated battery and solar panel
• Data visualization and alarm triggering via addVANTAGE Pro software
• Data output protocol used for web publication to inform residents in real time about the water level