TITLE:
Community-Based Flood Early Warning System in the Pacora River Basin, Panama
AUTHORS:
Freddy Picado Traña, Octavio Smith, Tania Maure, Luis Villamonte, Elicet Yáñez, Obed Acosta, Danna Mitre, Omar Pérez
KEYWORDS:
Flood Early Warning System, Hydrological-Hydraulic Modeling, IoT/LoRaWAN, Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction, Panama
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Hydrology,
Vol.16 No.4,
October
29,
2026
ABSTRACT: Recurrent flooding in the Pacora River basin (east of Panama City) exposes structural and social vulnerabilities that traditional warning systems, based solely on precipitation, fail to mitigate effectively owing to high false-positive rates and insufficient lead times. This study presents the design, implementation and retrospective evaluation of the Community-Based Flood Early Warning System (SATCOI, for its acronym in Spanish), a hybrid architecture that integrates distributed hydrologic-hydraulic modelling (QSWAT/HEC-RAS 2D), IoT telemetry via LoRaWAN and an operational strategy of dynamic thresholds. The contribution is methodological and proof-of-concept in scope: it formulates and tests a “2-of-3” decision rule in which multiscale rainfall, river stage and 30-min rate of rise are combined, with the rainfall stream modulated by a bounded categorical Antecedent Precipitation Index (API-72, k = 0.85; maximum 10% threshold reduction). Within a 25-case retrospective inventory (2018-2024), SATCOI indicated—in-sample, not as prospective skill—a 77.8% reduction in false positives (from 60% to 13.3%) relative to a static P24h threshold and eliminated false negatives; the alert lead time is reported as a reconstructed sensor-model latency (1.5 ± 0.5 h to 4.8 ± 1.2 h), distinct from the 4 - 6 h upstream sensing window that is a design expectation of gauge placement. Rainfall thresholds derive from IDF/Gumbel design rainfall, which does not by itself establish a stage-discharge relation at Carriazo; stage and rate-of-rise triggers are model-informed, obtained from HEC-RAS 2D stage hydrographs referenced to a common verified datum, pending paired hydrometric validation. A +4% wet-side precipitation sensitivity test, informed by CMIP6-derived national projections for eastern Panama, projects an approximate 12% expansion of the 100-year floodplain by 2050, interpreted as a scenario-based sensitivity indicator rather than a deterministic SSP5-8.5 forecast. Participatory validation with more than 200 purposively sampled participants yielded descriptive process indicators (>70% stated confidence; 20-min mean drill response), not representative estimates of basin-wide behaviour. SATCOI provides a potentially replicable framework for humid-tropical risk management, indicating that integrating data science, low-cost technology and multilevel governance supports climate resilience subject to local recalibration and prospective validation.