Google to help predict floods in India

The Central Water Commission and Google have decided to team up to help predict floods in the country. The two signed an agreement on Monday which will allow the Centre to have access to state-of-the-art technologies developed by Google related to artificial intelligence and geo-spatial mapping.

"The initiative is likely to help crisis management agencies to deal extreme hydrological events in a better manner. Under this agreement, the CWC and Google will share technical expertise in various fields, including geospatial mapping and analysis of hydrological observation data," the Water Resources Ministry said in an official statement.

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The agreement also hopes to improve CWC's flood information systems with its predictions and give more accurate and actionable insights. The collaboration will also considerably increase the warning time before floods.

There will also be a high-priority research project utilising the Google Earth Engine to help visualise and improve flood management and a cultural project to build online exhibitions on the Rivers of India.

Under the collaborative arrangement, Google will use a high-resolution Digital Elevation Model and vast computational resources to generate flood inundation maps utilising the level forecast input provided by the CWC.

Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari also expressed hope that the collaboration with Google will help in effective flood management in India.

This initiative on flood forecast is likely to meet the much-awaited demand of the inhabitants of the flood-prone areas for inundation warnings with sufficient lead time.

Till 2016, the CWC was disseminating flood levels with maximum lead time of one day. During the flood season of 2017, the CWC resorted to rainfall-based modelling and issued flood advisories on a trial basis with 3 days lead time.