MADRID – Google is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) flood forecasting service, dubbed ‘Flood Hub’, to an additional 60 countries, including Spain. With the help of AI, this service can make flood forecasts for a period of seven days.
With the system, Google wants to contribute to the safety of people amid the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters due to climate change. Moreover, flooding is seen as one of the main climate threats. According to the IPCC, more than 250 million people are affected worldwide and an economic loss of about $10 billion.
Flood Hub platform
The ‘Flood Hub’ platform provides river flood forecasting. Furthermore, it informs about where and when rivers will overflow in different parts of the world, where around 460 million people live. If you want to know how to use Flood Hub, watch this video.
With this expansion, the platform now also includes areas with a higher risk of flooding, such as the Netherlands, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. And also, countries with extreme climatic events, such as;
In Europe
- Belgium
- Spain
- Germany
The Central American Dry Corridor, which crosses the following:
- Nicaragua
- Honduras
- Guatemala
Expansion is underway
Google is working to expand the flood warnings on the search engine and maps over the next 12 months to give users easy access to this crucial information.
Flood Hub available in 80 countries
Google’s flood preparedness AI service was first launched in 2018 in India and Bangladesh to help with the impacts of annual floods. Then, in 2022, the alerts were expanded to 18 more countries and are now available in 80 countries.
Facilitate emergency response
Using a combination of hydrological and flooding models, Google Floods predicts the flow of water in rivers and determines which areas could be affected and how high the water could rise. This tool is part of Google’s commitment to facilitating emergency response not only to floods but also to wildfires and earthquakes.
