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News India Live, Digital Desk: Google has taken a revolutionary step to reduce the damage caused by natural disasters, especially flash floods and cloudburst incidents. Google has launched a new AI-powered flood forecasting model, trained on over 50 lakh news articles and historical data. This technology is now capable of giving accurate warnings even in sensitive places like Dharli (Uttarakhand). How does this AI model work? Traditional models often rely only on rainfall and river level data, but this new model from Google adopts a ‘multi-modal’ approach: Analysis of news articles: The model has processed more than 50 lakh news articles from the last several decades. This helped AI understand what conditions (such as sudden temperature rise or heavy rainfall) have led to floods in the past. Real-time data: This combines satellite imagery, weather forecasts and local sensor data to produce a ‘predictive map’. Flash flood warning: Unlike normal floods, flash floods have very little preparation time. This model can now predict floods up to 7 days in advance, which was earlier only 2-3 days. Will help in incidents like Dharli cloudburst. Cloud burst incidents are common in Dharli and upper Himalayan regions of Uttarakhand. This technology of Google can prove to be especially effective for these areas: Hyper-local Alerts: It can issue warnings at the level of small villages and valleys instead of big cities. Android Alerts: Google sends alerts to local people directly through notifications and search on Android phones, giving crucial time for rescue operations. Key Features of Flood Hub Global Coverage: This service is available in more than 80 countries including India. Free access: Anyone can visit Google’s ‘Flood Hub’ platform to see the risk in their area. Indigenous languages: In India, it issues alerts in several regional languages, including Hindi.