Rainfalls over an extended period and an extended area can cause major rivers to overflow their banks. The water can cover enormous areas. Downstream areas may be affected, even when they didn?t receive much rain themselves. With large rivers the process is relatively slow. The rain water enters the river in many ways. Some rain will fall into the river directly, but that alone doesn?t make the river rise high. A lot of rain water will run off the surface when the soil is saturated or hard. It will flow to small rivers that flow to larger rivers and these rivers flow into even larger rivers. In this way all the rain that fell in a large area comes together in this one very large river. When there is lot of rain over a long period, you see the river rise gradually as it is fed with water from smaller rivers. It takes time for all the rainwater to reach the river, but once it is in the river it has to flow downstream to sea.

While the water level slowly rises, officials can decide to evacuate people before the river water overflows. The area that is flooded can be huge. villages surrounded by large stretches of water where cattle would normally graze. Whole communities can become isolated from the rest of the world as roads are blocked and communications are down. Here you see a simulation of the water level over time after a river dyke breach in a low lying part of the Netherlands.

When a dyke or a dam breaks and a lot of water is released suddenly, the speed of the water at the breach can be compared with the speed of plane. As a larger area gets covered the speed will be reduced. The water spreads out as much as possible flowing to the lower lying areas before slowly rising. A breach is very dangerous for the people living close to it. The strength of the water may drag cars, trees and even houses away and cause loss of lives.

This model aims to solve the problem of damage to dams due to overfilling of the dams. Heavy rain, which is often not predicted due to rapidly changing climatic conditions of the countries, causes dams to fill beyond their holding capacity. This overfilling causes damage to the dam. The dam breaks open and water spills into the river and causes it to flood. The river floods over the lands in turn causing damage to the inhabitants. Often it causes wreckage to homes and lands of the inhabitants

This model uses sensor technology to prevent such damages due to over spilling of dams. Dams have a limit to their water holding capacity. This capacity is calculated and when the water levels exceed this capacity, it is captured by the sensor. The dams have an opening, which is alerted and opened by the sensor. It opens out into the river. Only the extra water is let out smoothly into the river. This prevents the river from flooding, and hence the damage to the lands is curbed. The model is highly effective and must be immediately be applied to dams in the country.