Google has unveiled ‘FloodHub’, a platform that displays flood forecasts.
FloodHub shows the location and time where floods could occur, with the aim of giving early warnings about the impending natural calamity, so authorities can effectively find solutions.
According to the technology giant, “We’re also using AI to forecast floods, another extreme weather pattern exacerbated by climate change. We’ve already helped communities to predict when floods will hit and how deep the waters will get. In 2021, we sent 115 million flood alert notifications to 23 million people over Google Search and Maps, helping save countless lives.”
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Google’s AI Flood Forecasting Service
The search engine has also expanded its AI flood forecasting services across 18 nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
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“Today, we’re sharing that we’re now expanding our coverage to more countries in South America (Brazil and Colombia), Sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Angola, South Sudan, Namibia, Liberia, and South Africa), and South Asia (Sri Lanka),” Google said.
The tech firm stated that the company had used an AI technique called transfer learning to make it work in areas where there is fewer data available. “We’re also announcing the global launch of Google FloodHub, a new platform that displays when and where floods may occur. We’ll also be bringing this information to Google Search and Maps in the future to help more people to reach safety in flooding situations.”
Recall that Flood forecasting services supported by AI were initially introduced in India in 2018. In the same year, Google Commissioned its flood forecasting services to protect people from disasters.
Other updates from Google
Google has also integrated its Lens image recognition feature into several other features. It includes Google Chrome and Photos. Earlier, 9to5Google had revealed that the search engine is also adding a Lens button to its home page in its search bar.
After users click on the Lens button, they are prompted to upload an image or paste a URL to one. Once they do so, they will be taken to a page that might be familiar to them if they have used the Lens app before or any of its other versions.