Toward a World Where No One Is Caught Off Guard by Natural Disasters

Over the past decade, Google has advanced its AI-based research beyond simply providing information to the stage of predicting and detecting floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and extreme weather. Through this, billions of users around the world are being supported to get practical help in crisis situations.

In the flood prediction field, Flood Hub provides forecast information to 2 billion people in 150 countries. In particular, the global model published in Nature and the new AI methodology Groundsource enable high-accuracy predictions even in data-scarce regions. Forecast information is provided up to 7 days in advance for river flooding and up to 24 hours in advance for flash floods in urban areas.

Weather and wildfire response technologies are also being advanced:

• WeatherNext 2: Generates detailed hourly forecasts for the entire world within minutes, accurately predicting key variables such as wind speed, precipitation, and air pressure.
• FireSat: Uses satellite imagery to track wildfire boundaries, and is collaborating with the Earth Fire Alliance and Muon Space to further improve detection capabilities going forward.

For these technical achievements, Google is releasing its datasets and frameworks as open source, helping researchers and local experts build new solutions.