[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: Hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires,
and floods.
If we can predict natural disasters
we can prevent serious loss of life.
And so the inventors at Google have
been working on an alert system that's
doing exactly that for floods.
It's one of the largest-scale examples of how
AI can be used for social good.
YOSSI MATIAS: Flood forecasting was a very exploratory project.
The big question was, can we use technology
to help out on this dire problem?
Starting with the basic needs for getting information
about what's going on, where is it happening,
what should they be doing.
SELLA NEVO: One of the most important variables
during a crisis is reliable information.
There's so much work that's already
been done by governments, and we're
trying to learn from that work and assist them
with their goals.
In India, where we're running our first pilot program,
the government has thousands of people
who are measuring the water level, which
allows them to know whether the river will overflow and flood.
But it doesn't yet allow them to understand exactly what areas
are going to be affected.
ADITI UMRAO: Advancement in technology
would help us better in spreading this message faster.
SELLA NEVO: To be able to provide
a forecast in real time, we rely on the government
we're working with.
We start by collecting thousands of satellite images
to build a digital model of the terrain.
Based on these maps, we generate hundreds of thousands
of simulations of how the river could possibly behave.
We can then send those forecasts to individuals
using search, maps, and Android notifications.
ADITI UMRAO: I can't imagine a greater privilege
than to do what we love, which is develop technology, and do
it in a way that could actually help people directly
in a very profound way.
[LAUGHING]
SPEAKER: Well, I'm thrilled to welcome Sella Nevo, the project
lead for Google's Flood Forecasting Initiative,
who we just saw in that film.
Sella, welcome.
SELLA NEVO: Yeah thank you for having me.
SPEAKER: So what inspired you and Google
to start this project?
SELLA NEVO: Yeah, I think the thing that most drew us
to this project is just the unbelievable impact of floods.
Every year, floods affect hundreds of millions of people
and can cause between thousands and tens of thousands
of fatalities.
And it's hard to grasp the size of these numbers,
but just to give an example, a few years ago,
we visited the [? Nuaon ?] village in Bihar, India
just a couple of days before severe floods with no warning
destroyed all houses there except a handful.
And we had the privilege of meeting Rakesh,
who is a young guy there who was one of the only people who knew
how to swim in the village.
And he spent hours swimming through raging
flood waters trying to save families from the floods.
And its examples like these, which unfortunately are not
uncommon, that really emphasize just how important
it is to do something.
One additional aspect is just how much there is to do.
So flood forecasting systems can prevent between 30% and 50%
of both fatalities and economic harms,
and Google can help in the alert distribution
phase, in the modeling phase, and a lot
of different components.
And just in the past year, we've sent more than 100
million notifications to people who were facing floods.
SPEAKER: So I know you've got a lot to do,
but what does the future hold for this technology?
SELLA NEVO: Yeah, there's a lot more we want to do to help.
Our top priority is really getting these alerts
to more people.
Our operational flood forecasting systems
currently cover about 360 million people
across India and Bangladesh, but there are billions more
who could use this information.
So that's kind of our number one priority.
A second thing we really want to work on
is extending the lead time of our alerts.
We currently notify people up to two days
before flooding reaches them, and we really
want to extend that up to about five days, which
would be even more helpful for governments and NGOs trying
to do more complex preparations for upcoming floods.
SPEAKER: So what are the biggest challenges you and your team
are facing right now?
SELLA NEVO: Yeah, so there's a lot of challenges in this work.
One of our biggest challenges is reaching
people who don't have access to the internet.
So if someone's connected to the internet,
we have a lot of ways of reaching them as Google,
whether that's search, maps, or Android notifications.
But for those who don't--
and many people who are the most vulnerable to flooding
don't have access to the internet or smartphones or kind
of high technology.
For those, we really need the help of others.
So for example, one of the things we're doing
is collaborating with local NGOs and the International
Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
to do what's called community-based learning.
We send our notifications to them
and they have volunteers on the ground that
use their own local networks to make sure
that everyone who needs this information
is able to access it.
SPEAKER: So can you apply this forecasting to volcanoes?
SELLA NEVO: Yeah, that's a great question.
So we're slowly expanding to more and more types
of disasters, and we'll have some exciting news
not necessarily on volcanic eruptions
but on other disaster types soon.
I think it'll be a while until we reach volcanoes,
but indeed, there's no lack of things
we're hoping to help with.
SPEAKER: Will this forecast service
be implemented within, for instance,
Google Maps or Google Search?
And if so, how can I get it or sign up for it?
SELLA NEVO: Yeah, that's a great question as well.
So first of all, this already exists within Google Search
and Google Maps.
So currently, if there's a flooding event near you
in a place where we do cover, you
will see this just by searching for floods
if you're in the area or floods in the name
of the affected area even if you're searching from far away.
And you can see this both on Maps and in Google Search.
You don't need to sign up to anything,
and I think that's part of the benefit.
Right, many of us don't think about floods or other disasters
until we're directly affected.
So I think part of the benefit here
is indeed we want to be able to reach people proactively
when they need it even if they haven't prepared in advance.
SPEAKER: So I have another question for you,
slightly different.
What made you want to become an inventor?
SELLA NEVO: Oh wow.
Yeah, I think that for me, the real goal
is having real world impact.
So there are just so many things that people across the world
have to deal with.
Just recently, we had the COP26 conference,
where we discussed a lot of the effects of climate affecting
billions of people across the planet.
And so for me, the goal was to try
and see, how can I help as many of those people
in a significant way.
And I think that developing innovative technology
is just such a scalable and an effective way of really trying
to help enormous amounts of people in meaningful ways.
So I think that's what kind of brought me to this path.
SPEAKER: Thank you so much for talking with us
and for sharing your work that's clearly making so much
of a difference.
SELLA NEVO: Thank you very much.