<
https://www.fastcompany.com/90964575/google-launches-flood-hub-in-the-u-s-which-predicts-when-rivers-will-flood-and-warns-people-to-evacuate>
"In August, when heavy rain hit parts of Chile, tens of thousands of people had
to evacuate their homes as their communities flooded. Many got a warning a
couple of days in advance, thanks to a tool from Google called Flood Hub that
rolled out in the country earlier this year.
Before Flood Hub existed, it was “practically impossible” to accurately predict
when rivers would flood, says Yossi Matias, vice president of engineering and
research at Google. When a team at Google first started working on the problem
five years ago, they didn’t know if they’d be able to find a solution because
of the complexity of understanding factors like topography, soil type, and how
much water will reach an area during a storm. “This was really kind of a
moonshot, in a way,” he says. “Can we use machine learning and other
technologies in order to try to predict floods at some level of accuracy that
that would be valuable?”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
