Make a flood barrier system

This is one of a series of resources from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, produced in association with Fairfield Control Systems, exploring the theme of waterways.  This resource involves designing and making a programmable electronic system to control a flood barrier.

Because of climate change, many parts of the world are now at risk of flooding. In this activity, pupils are tasked with designing and making an electronic circuit for an automatic flood barrier for when the water level in a river gets too high. They will produce a block diagram of their system design and will then assemble their system and use Crumble software to program it to perform the required functions. You can access an example programming file using crumble here:- education.theiet.org/secondary/teaching-resources/make-a-flood-barrier-system/

This activity could be used to teach about embedding programmable components in systems and assembling and testing programmable systems. It could also be used as part of a wider scheme of work focussing on social issues and the importance of the waterways in the United Kingdom. 

Learning outcomes:-

• design and make an electronic control system for a flood barrier
• understand how block diagrams are used to represent systems
• use programmable components to solve a real engineering problem