Google announces flood expansions and wildfire tracking for new countries as climate change continues. This announcement is made in line with the UN’s COP27 conference.
Google has begun bringing flood alerts and forecasting to 18 countries, starting with flooding. This expansion will expand to African, Latin America, and Southeast Asia countries. Google uses these tools to notify people about flooding conditions via Maps and Search. More than 115 million alerts were sent by Google in 2021.
They’re expanding flood forecasts to include river basins in 18 more countries, including Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The global launch of FloodHub is also announced. This platform displays flood forecasts and shows where and when floods might occur. It helps the most at risk and provides critical information to governments and aid agencies. We are committed to expanding our geographic coverage due to recent AI flood forecasting model breakthroughs.
Google Maps and Search are now offering more support for wildfire tracking tools. These tools were first introduced in the United States in May. They use AI models and satellite imagery to display the location of wildfires in real-time. This is both an alert tool for the general public and a way to aid firefighting efforts. New AI models based on satellite imagery help us detect wildfire boundaries and display their location in Search and Maps.
Since July, they’ve covered more than 30 major wildfire events in the U.S. and Canada. This has helped inform people and firefighting crews with more than 7 million views on Search and Maps. As a result, wildfire detection is now possible in the U.S.A, Canada, Mexico, and parts of Australia.
