Google to help govt in flood management across the country

The government will team up with the global technology major Google for effective flood management in India. Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari said that collaboration with Google will help in better flood management in the country. Central Water Commission (CWC), India’s apex technical organisation in the field of Water Resources, has entered into a collaboration agreement with Google. CWC would use state-of-the-art advances made by Google in the in the field of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and geo-spatial mapping for effective management of water resources particularly in the field of flood forecast and dissemination of flood-related information to the masses, a Water Resources ministry statement said. 
 
The initiative is likely to help crisis management agencies to deal extreme hydrological events in a better way.
 
Under this agreement, CWC and Google will share technical expertise in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial mapping and analysis of hydrological observation data. This will help improve flood prediction systems, which will help provide location-targeted, actionable flood warnings,  high priority research project utilising Google Earth Engine to help visualise and improve flood management and a cultural project to build online exhibitions on the Rivers of India .
 
The ministry had earlier launched ‘National Hydrology Project’ (NHP) programme during the year 2016-17. NHP is a World Bank-assisted central sector scheme with pan India coverage. 
The objective of National Hydrology Project is to improve the extent, quality, and accessibility of water resources information, decision support system for floods and basin level resource assessment/planning and to strengthen the capacity of targeted water resources professionals and management institutions in India.