Google has been warning its users about natural disasters for years, introducing automated alerts from government agencies in each country, in applications such as Google Maps and Android Search. But now, it will make the predictions itself. In partnership with the Central Water Commission of India, Google will inform its users about impending floods. The new service is currently available only in the Patna region, with the first warning alert going out a few days ago.
As a Google engineer reports in a blog post , impending floods are calculated by combining machine learning, rainfall history, and flood simulations
“A variety of elements such as historical events, river water levels and geographical location are very important data that “feed” our programs. With this information we created a model that can not only “guess” an impending flood, but also its size.”
The partnership between Google and the Central Water Commission was announced in June, where they agreed to jointly research and create the tool. The alerts the program will provide are extremely important, as 20% of the world's floods are estimated to occur in India.
Using Artificial Intelligence technology to predict future events is nothing new, with companies like Microsoft and IBM having built and tested such models in the past. To do this, they have to process vast amounts of historical data to discover commonalities or patterns between past events. This is where artificial intelligence programs excel.
