Google announces AI that can predict floods one week in advance and save 460 million people in 80 countries from flood damage
Approximately 1.5 billion people around the world, equivalent to 20% of the total population, are at risk of serious damage from floods, and floods cause damage to the global economy of approximately 50 billion dollars (approximately 7.5 trillion yen) annually. It is estimated that it will amount to . Google's AI research that can provide early warning up to seven days in advance of the occurrence of floods, which are difficult to predict in advance, has been published in the academic journal Nature.
Global prediction of extreme floods in ungauged watersheds | Nature
How Google uses AI to improve global flood forecasting
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-ai-global-flood-forecasting/
Using AI to expand global access to reliable flood forecasts – Google Research Blog
https://blog.research.google/2024/03/using-ai-to-expand-global-access-to.html
AI could help predict floods where traditional methods struggle
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-ai-traditional-methods-struggle.html
While flooding is becoming more severe due to climate change, there are many rivers around the world that do not have flow meters installed, making it extremely difficult to predict flood damage, especially in developing countries.
Below is a graph with the amount of flow meter data on the vertical axis and the GDP of each country on the horizontal axis. It is easy to see that there is an inverse correlation between the data available within each country and GDP, meaning that poorer countries have less data that can be used to predict floods.
To use the power of technology to predict natural disasters, a research team led by Google Research's Gray Nearing trained an AI model using data collected from 5,680 flowmeters around the world between 1980 and 2023. did.
Google's AI, developed in this way, can extend flood predictions using flood nowcasts to 0 days in advance, or an average of 5 days before the current day, and can predict up to 7 days in advance.
Below, the predictions made 0 days ago by the conventional prediction software Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) are shown in blue, and the predictions made by Google's AI 0 to 7 days in advance are shown in orange. Google's AI was able to make predictions 5 days in advance with an accuracy comparable to GloFAS's predictions 0 days in advance.
This AI enables Google to send out flood forecasts in 80 countries around the world, where 460 million people live, and provides forecast information through Google Search, Google Maps, Android notifications,
'There is still a lot of room for improvement in global flood prediction and early warning systems,' the researchers wrote in their paper. It is vitally important to the well-being of all people around the world.'
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