A Framework for Predicting Droughts in DevelopingCountries Using Sensor Networks and Mobile Phones

Abstract

Drought is the most complex and least understood of all naturaldisasters and it affects more people than any other hazard.Droughts have become synonymous with the developingcountries and in particular the Sub-Saharan Africa where thehazard is chronic. Effects of droughts can be mitigated if accurate and timely drought predications were to be done.Unfortunately, despite the enormous advancements in science,predictions only provide indications of trends. A majorweakness of the existing tools is the emphasis onmacro/international level information. The tools also tend toignore the at risk community who happen to be host to verycrucial traditional knowledge on droughts. In this paper, wepropose an integrated drought predication framework thatconsiders both scientific and traditional knowledge andcombines the use of mobile phones with wireless sensornetworks to be able to capture and relay micro droughtparameters. The framework is an enhancement of ITU’s Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) Layers . In order toaccommodate the diverse roles mobile phones play in ourframework, Layer 2 (USN Access Networking) is implementedusing three sub-layers composed of heterogeneous gateways.