IoT-Based Smart Shelter for Flood and Earthquake

Abstract

Natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes pose a severe threat to human life and infrastructure, often leaving little time for people to react. Most existing disaster management systems are limited to monitoring and alerting functions, without providing any immediate physical protection. This paper presents an IoT-Based Smart Shelter System integrated with the GeoSafe mobile application, designed to detect floods and earthquakes in real time and respond automatically. The system employs an ESP32 microcontroller connected to a raindrop sensor and a vibration sensor (MPU6050) for continuous environmental monitoring. Upon disaster detection, the system activates a buzzer alert, triggers a relay module to deploy an inflatable shelter, and simultaneously sends real-time notifications through the GeoSafe Android application. The application provides disaster alerts, weather information, global disaster maps, GPS-based shelter location tracking, emergency helplines, and safety guidelines. Firebase is used as the cloud database for real-time data synchronization. The proposed system bridges the critical gap between disaster detection and immediate physical protection, making it a comprehensive, automated, and low-cost disaster management solution suitable for both urban and rural environments.

Introduction

The text describes an IoT-based Smart Shelter System (GeoSafe) designed to improve disaster management for floods and earthquakes by combining real-time detection with immediate physical protection. Traditional disaster systems mainly provide alerts, but this solution goes further by automatically deploying an inflatable shelter when a disaster is detected, reducing the critical delay between warning and safety.

The system uses an ESP32 microcontroller connected to a raindrop sensor (for floods), an MPU6050 vibration sensor (for earthquakes), and a GPS module for location tracking. When threshold levels are exceeded, the system triggers a buzzer, activates a relay to inflate a portable shelter, and sends real-time alerts to a mobile application via Firebase.

The GeoSafe Android app enhances functionality by providing disaster alerts, GPS-based shelter locations, weather updates, survival guidelines, emergency helplines, and a chatbot assistant. It ensures real-time synchronization between hardware and software components.

Conclusion

This paper presented the IoT-Based Smart Shelter System for Flood and Earthquake using the GeoSafe mobile application. The proposed system successfully integrates IoT hardware (ESP32, raindrop sensor, MPU6050, GPS, relay, inflator) with a cloud-connected Android application to provide a complete, automated disaster management solution. Unlike traditional systems that are limited to alerting, the proposed system bridges the critical gap between detection and protection by automatically deploying a physical inflatable shelter upon disaster detection. The GeoSafe application further enhances user safety by providing real-time notifications, GPS shelter mapping, weather updates, survival guidelines, helplines, and an AI chatbot assistant. All system components were successfully tested, with 100% pass rates across hardware and software test cases. The system demonstrated a near-instant response time of under 10 seconds from detection to notification and shelter deployment. Future enhancements include integration of AI/ML for predictive disaster modeling, expansion to cover additional disaster types (landslides, cyclones, fires), solar-powered operation for remote areas, a web-based dashboard for disaster management authorities, and improved shelter design for greater capacity and durability.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Mr. Raj Dere, Mr. Atharva Sakunde, Prof. Aasifa Bagwan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.