According to a report that was issued by the globe Bank, around 1.81 billion people, which is more than one fifth of the total population of the globe, are currently at danger of experiencing “significant flood risk.”
At the same time when multiple other studies are warning that climate change is making floods more likely and severe, this one comes as well. According to a report that was released by the United Nations a month ago, the likelihood of coastal flooding will grow by a factor of five throughout this century.
There are a number of flood monitoring companies that are now utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to assist them in sounding the alert before the floods rise. This is being done in order to help decrease the damage that flooding has.
The company 7Analytics, which has its headquarters in the city of Bergen in Norway, is comprised of a group of computer scientists and geologists who provide businesses and local authorities with real-time predictions of floods and inform them of which locations are particularly susceptible to flood damage.
According to Jonas Torland, co-founder of 7Analytics, “We are actually able to predict, based on the weather forecasts, what flooding will occur up to seven days in advance, and it is down to the very finest grain.”
Every one of these pieces of information takes into consideration the path that the water will go and the areas that it may cause issues. In five days, we will be able to tell you that there will be fifty centimeters of water at your entry, and we will also be able to tell you when the water will lessen.
The artificial intelligence program of the company does an automatic analysis of not only the weather but also the geography of the land and rivers, the degree to which a region is populated, and the drainage capacity of the area. In the past, flood prediction calculations were performed by normal software. However, because to the increased computer power and the ability to learn, artificial intelligence has made it possible to complete the work in a shorter amount of time and with far less involvement from humans.
In the year 2020, the company was established, and according to Mr. Torland, it was initially challenging for the company to acquire financial backing from investors. As a result of the fact that people are becoming more aware that flooding is a major problem, he claims that all of that has altered in just three years.
“Everything is completely different now,” Mr. Torland notes. “Now we get investors coming to us, because they finally understood the value of adaptation [against flooding].”
Neara, a firm established in London, is another company that operates in this sector. In order to provide the energy infrastructure business with digital flood simulations, it employs artificial intelligence. These forecasts the trajectory that floods are anticipated to take, allowing power networks to get ready and take measures to reduce the amount of damage they do.
It asserts that their data can demonstrate where it is safe to restore power after a flood, where cables should be turned off, where power should be diverted, and the precise areas where engineers should be dispatched.
In light of the fact that flooding can be unforeseen, I believe that the loss of electricity is one of the most major sources of destruction, as stated by Mary Cleary, who is the chief marketing officer of Neara.
Ms. Cleary goes on to say that the digital models that the company develops for the utility networks “reflect in hyper realistic detail all the nuances there are, from the actual width of individual cables to what the nearby buildings and vegetation look like.”