Google expands AI flood forecasting to 18 more nations

San Francisco: Google now expanded its AI flood forecasting services to 18 additional countries across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The services were first introduced in India in 2018, IANS reported.

Further, the American tech MNC also launched the "FloodHub", a platform that displays flood forecasts and shows when and where floods might occur so that people directly at risk can get the information they need, and authorities can assist them effectively.

Google's 2018 initiative helped forecast the natural disaster and to combat the same.

The firm said in a blog post, "In the first three years, we expanded our programme to cover much of India and Bangladesh, working in partnership with the Indian Central Water Commission and with the Bangladesh Water Development Board, covering an area with about 220 million people and sending out 40 million potentially life-saving alerts."

"In 2021, our operational systems were further expanded to cover an area with over 360 million people. Thanks to better flood prediction technology, we sent out over 115 million alerts -- that's about triple the amount we previously sent out," it said.

Google also expanded its wildfire tracking program to more countries after a pilot run in the United States. Using new AI models based on satellite imagery, the company detect wildfire boundaries and show their real-time location in Search and Maps.

Google said, "Since July, we've covered more than 30 big wildfire events in the US and Canada, helping inform people and firefighting teams with over 7 million views in Search and Maps. Today, wildfire detection is now available in the US, Canada, Mexico and parts of Australia."