Green Stream Technologies provides real time flood monitoring systems that help communities, agencies, and infrastructure operators detect rising water, monitor rainfall and weather conditions, and respond quickly to flood risk. Its solution brings together rugged sensor kits, autonomous solar power, secure cloud services, dashboards, alerts, APIs, integrations, field services, training, and ongoing support.
The challenge
For flood monitoring to be useful, data has to get through. A water level reading, rainfall measurement, or field image can support decisions during a fast moving event, but only if it reaches the right people in time.
Many of the locations that need monitoring are rural, coastal, or riverside sites where cellular coverage can be limited. Even where LTE is normally available, severe weather can disrupt terrestrial networks during the events these systems are designed to track. Green Stream needed a communications approach that could work across different environments, while balancing cost, reliability, latency, and operational risk.
The solution
Green Stream uses a site-by-site telemetry strategy. Where LTE coverage is strong, cellular is often the most cost-effective option. In remote areas with little or no cellular coverage, Iridium can act as the primary communications path. For mission critical sites, especially in flood-prone areas where storms may affect cellular networks, Green Stream can pair LTE with Iridium failover.
That flexibility helps Green Stream match the connectivity method to the site. It also reflects a deliberate choice. Flood monitoring depends on high resolution, real time data that customers can act on. Some emerging LEO satellite options can be lower cost, but may require waiting for a satellite pass. For flash flooding, a two- or three-hour reporting gap is not good enough. Iridium gives Green Stream global coverage and the ability to report every five minutes, with no missed reporting windows.
Using Ground Control’s RockBLOCK devices, Green Stream can add Iridium connectivity to monitoring stations beyond the reach of terrestrial networks, from rural riverbanks to coastal plains and other high impact locations.
The service evolution
Green Stream first used RockBLOCK 9603, based on Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD), to send compact reports from remote monitoring sites. For many applications, that was enough: small packets of data covering water levels, rainfall, device status, and network health.
As its deployments evolved, Green Stream began moving to RockBLOCK 9704 and RockBLOCK Plus 9704, which use Iridium Messaging Transport (IMT). The difference is significant. RockBLOCK 9603 messages are measured in hundreds of bytes; RockBLOCK 9704 supports messages up to 100KB.
That larger message size creates room for richer reporting. Water level data remains central to flood monitoring, but Green Stream can now look at adding more context, including images from the field. During a flood event, imagery can help emergency managers see what conditions look like on the ground, not just read what a sensor is reporting.
The result
Satellite connectivity helps Green Stream reduce operational risk, especially in remote or high-impact locations where site visits can be difficult, slow, or unsafe.
During severe weather, continuity of data becomes especially important. By using Iridium through Ground Control’s RockBLOCK devices, Green Stream can offer an added layer of resilience for sites where communications failure would have the greatest impact.
This matters as Green Stream expands into more rural and underserved areas. These communities may face serious flood risk, but lack dependable cellular coverage. Satellite connectivity helps make early warning systems practical in places that would otherwise be harder to monitor.
“We chose Ground Control because it provided a fast and straightforward path to integrating Iridium into our systems, which was important for getting a satellite solution to market quickly. The platform is intuitive and well documented, and our Account Manager, Elonda, has been knowledgeable and responsive, which has made the partnership easy to work with.”
– Karen Lindquist, Green Stream
Looking ahead
Green Stream is continuing to scale as more communities look for better ways to manage flood risk. Its approach – start with a pilot, then expand to a wider network – gives customers a practical path from initial deployment to broader flood intelligence systems.
As those networks grow, satellite connectivity will help Green Stream reach more sites, support more resilient deployments, and feed local data into regional or state-level systems for emergency management.
Let’s connect your next deployment
Green Stream’s flood monitoring network is one example of how satellite IoT can help critical data keep moving when cellular coverage is limited, unreliable, or at risk of disruption.
If you’re developing an IoT solution for remote, mobile, or mission critical environments, Ground Control can help you assess your options and build a connectivity approach that fits your application, budget, and growth plans.
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