When DHM commissioned IES to design and install a 62-station early warning network across Province 2, the brief was simple: cover the flood-prone Terai belt before monsoon. The reality, as always, was more complicated. Site selection alone took six weeks. Each candidate location was assessed for flood exposure, community accessibility, and — critically — a reliable line of sight for radio telemetry back to the district hub. Of the 90 sites originally scoped, 62 passed every criterion. Getting the hardware right Our field engineers standardised on a solar-powered sensor package built to survive the Terai's climate extremes. The final station specification included: Solar-powered water-level sensor with battery backup rated for 10 days without sun Tipping-bucket rainfall gauge, calibrated to local monsoon intensity Dual-path GSM / radio telemetry — redundancy if the mobile network fails during a flood Tamper-resistant, flood-rated enclosure rated to IP66 Local siren and light alarm, triggered independently of the central system "The community handover mattered as much as the engineering. A station nobody trusts is a station nobody evacuates for." — Field Team Lead, IES Monitoring & EWS unit