AI has been in the headlines for disrupting jobs however this time AI is helping humanity, as Google has just introduced a new AI-powered tool that will help cities predict floods in advance. According to them, this new feature will allow AI to predict floods almost 24 hours before they even occur. In this article let’s take a look at how the new tool from Google works.
How does Groundsource work?
According to Google, its new Groundsource is a new AI-powered methodology tool that can transform public information into a high-quality record of historical disaster data. The interesting thing about this is using this tool, Google can predict flash floods in urban areas for up to 24 hours in advance.
Google wrote in its blogpost ‘’The urban flash floods forecasts are available in Google’s Flood Hub along with our existing riverine flood forecasts which cover 2 billion people in more than 150 countries for the most significant riverine floods. Groundsource provides a massive, open-source benchmark to scale their impact.
Where is Groundsource available?
As far as the Groundsource tool’s availability and release date is concerned the tool is available to use now on the website, Google’s Flood Hub. On the website, there are over 150 countries available for you to visit. It shows compiled data that includes historical data, with the water levels too.
Google says that they are aiming it at a lot of different people. As per them, this tool would allow for communities around the world to be better prepared before a disaster strikes. For researchers and scientists, Groundsource would provide an open-source benchmark to scale their impact, particularly in urban regions that have lacked historical flash flooding data.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently told on ‘X’ said, “We trained a new flood forecasting model designed to predict flash floods in urban areas up to 24 hours in advance. To help address a flash floods data gap, we created Groundsource: a new AI methodology using Gemini to identify 2.6M+ historical events across 150+ countries.”
Furthermore, he also gave a deep dive about the tool, suggesting, “We’re open-sourcing this dataset to advance global research, and urban flash flood forecasts are live now in Flood Hub to help communities stay safe.”