Dozens of people have fallen victim to the extreme weather phenomena in Spain, following the most severe floods in the country’s recent history. Severe weather warnings are in place until the end of the week, but technology could help prevent such events.
Flood Hub interactive flood early warning map Flood Hub Collage
Climate change has also caused devastating floods in Italy and other parts of the world in recent months. In the Atlantic, Hurricane Beryl, which hit Jamaica in May 2024, marked the beginning of the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30. And Florida, for example, has been rocked by massive hurricanes in less than a month, culminating in Hurricane Milton, which President Joe Biden called “storm of the century”. More than 1 million inhabitants received evacuation orders. Milton joins a growing list of storms that have developed into devastating hurricanes in recent years, comparable to the number of hurricanes recorded from 1960-2016, such as Harvey (2017), Laura (2020), Ida (2021) and Jan (2022).
While the climate crisis is hampering the work of forecasters, making it harder to predict when and where a hurricane will strike, technology offers promising solutions to improve predictions.
For example, a tool based on artificial intelligence can warn residents of exposed regions up to seven days before a disaster occurs. This is an interactive map Google Maps – Flood Hub – based on artificial intelligence (AI) and developed by the Google Research team, which can provide real-time forecasts of rising river levels, an average of five days before the phenomenon occurs, in more than 80 countries, including Spain and Romania.
Flood Hub: Google’s flood prevention tool
An extreme weather phenomenon, DANA, hit Spain this week, causing devastating effects, especially in the Valencian Community and Castilla-La Mancha. This tragedy left behind approximately 100 victims and countless missing persons, including 22 Romanians, with the emergency teams declaring themselves overwhelmed by the magnitude and impact of the rains.
But to minimize the damage and act in time, there are a number of technologies available, including the similar tool Google Mapswhich warns you a few days before the floods occur.
Flood Hub, Google’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform, is an easy-to-use tool that warns users of rain-related flooding before it happens, with the ability to even calculate areas that would be the most affected.
How Flood Hub works
The operation of the Flood Hub platform is very simple. When users access this platform, they see a world map that they can zoom in to zoom in on the country and city they want. There is also a search engine located at the top.
For Romania, the map shows a series of markings (SEE PHOTO) in different locations. In Spain, Valencia does not appear on the map, although the city avoided tragedy thanks to the new course of the Turia River, which affected neighboring municipalities. These markings indicate different alert levels depending on their color.
The meaning of the colors on the Flood Hub map
For example, if the checkmark is gray, it means that there is no data available, and if it is blue, everything is fine. The yellow color signifies a “warning”while red indicates “danger”and the brick signals a “extreme risk”.
When users click on one of these markers, a window opens on the left that displays forecasts of river capacity, hazard and warning levels, and when flooding is likely to occur.
Google mentions within this tool: “Flood conditions are approximate and provided for informational purposes only. Please refer to official sources for more information.” The tech giant detailed at the launch of the service that it has evaluated the usefulness of the technology, which has been tested using public and open datasets, and how it can be used to improve global access to forecasts of extreme situations in rivers around the world.
Flood Hub: the warning system that can predict floods seven days in advance
It was also mentioned that it can “alert people in areas likely to be affected up to 7 days before a disaster.” To achieve this, the system combines two artificial intelligence models that process the data: a hydrological model and a flood model. The first of these identifies whether a river is likely to burst its banks by processing publicly available data such as rainfall and other weather and watershed information, thereby issuing a forecast of water levels for the coming days.
The inundation model simulates the behavior of water as it moves through the floodplains, based on hydrological forecasts and satellite imagery, and allows the identification of areas that will be affected, as well as the estimation of water levels.
Google also mentioned in its statement: “Flood Hub is designed to meet the needs of governments, local aid organizations and people at risk. All information is free, public and shareable on social media. Forecasts are updated daily“.
