Extreme Weather, Artificial Intelligence, and the Enterprise: Google’s Flood Forecasting Initiative in India

What are the roles of the enterprise in weather forecasting? How is artificial intelligence technology transforming the field? What are the economic incentives? During this talk we’ll discuss these questions in the context of Google Flood Forecasting Initiative, which is using AI to provide high-accuracy high-resolution flood forecasts and warnings in developing countries, beginning with India. This initiative is a cross disciplinary effort including government, the India Central Water Commission (CWC) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD); academia for meteorological and hydrological expertise; and Google brings together the application of AI and machine learning to improve the timeliness and accuracy of weather and hydrological models, as well as unique datasets, such as high-resolution elevation maps that vastly improve prediction accuracy. Google Crisis Response works in partnership with CWC to provide accessible and understandable public alerts to reach those affected. This initiative serves as a model for cross-disciplinary efforts where industry, in this case Google, plays a significant role in adding value addressing large scale social impact.

When Rivers Rise: How AI is helping predict floods https://youtu.be/Mz0ikfuE_z0

Biographical sketch

Jason Hickey is a senior member of the technical staff in Google. He leads the AI for Weather team in Google Research, focusing on the use of machine learning to improve weather forecasting. Jason holds the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Cornell University, and the B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech. He has worked at Google since 2008, in areas including artificial intelligence, internet of things, and global computing infrastructure. He was Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Caltech from 1999--2008, research focusing on programming languages and distributed and scientific computing. Jason began his career in the 80s at Bellcore developing data networking for the Internet.