Maximizing the effectiveness of investments in public infrastructure and reducing costs
#GOOGLE EARTH FLOOD MAPS FREE#
The more detailed version of the tool in development for commercial use will provide resolution at a building-by-building level and incorporate building occupancy data.Īnd a free flood risk prediction tool for release next year will use artificial intelligence to generate current and future flood risk maps for three climate change scenarios at the city, district, and river basin levels. "Painting a detailed picture of the historical and potential flood risk areas will be invaluable for any urban and regional planning department," says project collaborator Dr. The new tool will also reflect new floods soon after they occur to provide the most up-to-date maps to help assess overall flood impacts and plan for the future. Wikipedia's list of history's deadliest floods shows 211 events, 103 of which occurred from 1985, the first year covered by the new tool's data. To validate the technology, maps generated in less than a minute using the new tool were compared to documented flooding events in Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Cambodia, India, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Thailand (detailed below), with 82% accuracy achieved. This produces a detailed map of flood inundation in recent decades, with available overlays of population, buildings and land use, which can be used for community planning, building zoning, insurance assessments and more. Layers of Landsat information for a selected region and specified timeframe identifies temporary and permanent water bodies while integrating site-specific elevation and land-use data. The World Flood Mapping Tool uses the Google Earth Engine combined with decades of Landsat data since 1985-a vast catalog of geospatial data enabling planet-scale analysis capabilities. And yet remarkably few regions, even in wealthy countries, have useful, up-to-date flood maps because of the cost and difficulty of creating them." "As temperatures continue to rise the number of flood events will increase along with their severity," he said. He adds that floods like those this year in Europe that killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damages are now up to nine times more likely because of climate change. Hamid Mehmood, a GIS and remote sensing specialist at UNU-INWEH who led the tool's development, says that a UNU-INWEH survey showed a majority of flood forecasting centers in flood-prone countries lack the ability to run complex flood forecasting models. "We need to prepare now for more intense and more frequent floods due to climate change and hope this tool will help developing nations in particular to see and mitigate the risks more clearly." "An estimated 1.5 billion people-greater than the population of Europe-live at risk of exposure to intense flooding," adds Dr. More recent floods worldwide have added to a fast growing toll of upended lives, damage and deaths." Says UNU-INWEH Director Vladimir Smakhtin: "Floods in the past decade have impacted the lives of more than half a billion people, mainly in low and middle income countries, and resulted in damages of nearly US $500 billion-roughly equal to the GDP of Singapore.
#GOOGLE EARTH FLOOD MAPS UPGRADE#
The tool allows users to adjust variables to help locate gaps in flood defenses and responses, and to plan future development of all kinds-for example, where to build or upgrade infrastructure, or develop agriculture. An upcoming version for more commercial uses, for example by insurance firms, will offer even more precise building-level resolution. Simple to use, the tool requires only Internet access to obtain a flood map at 30-meter resolution-street by street level. Created by the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Hamilton, Canada, with support from Google, MapBox and other partners listed below, the tool lets users adjust variables to help locate gaps in flood defenses and responses, and to plan future development of all kinds-for example, where to build or upgrade infrastructure, or develop agriculture.
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