Indian Govt to Team Up with Google for Flood Forecasting

India’s Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari on Monday expressed hope that collaboration with Google will help in effective flood management in India.

Central Water Commission (CWC), India’s apex technical organization in the field of Water Resources, has entered into a Collaboration Agreement with Google.

CWC would use state-of-the-art advances made by Google in the in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and geo spatial mapping for effective management of water resources particularly in the field of flood forecasting and dissemination of flood related information to the masses widely using the dissemination platforms developed by Google.

Today Ministry of Water Resources signed MOU with Google regarding flood management system in India. We aim to communicate accurate information about floods directly to people with the help of Google. pic.twitter.com/gVstaqDbVw

— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) June 18, 2018

This initiative is likely to help crisis management agencies to deal extreme hydrological events in a better manner.

Under this agreement, CWC and Google will share technical expertise in the fields of AI, machine learning, geospatial mapping and analysis of hydrological observation data to collaborate on (i) improving flood prediction systems, which will help provide location-targeted, actionable flood warnings, (ii) high priority research project utilizing Google Earth Engine to help visualize and improve flood management, and (iii) a cultural project to build online exhibitions on the Rivers of India.