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Author: Sanjeev Devasia

Crowd-sourcing can offer data to forecast floods in city

Source(s): Times of India, the
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A study by a team of researchers from IIT-Bombay has identified crowdsourcing from Twitter and volunteers on the ground in the city as a feasible source of reliable information on floods and waterlogging in Mumbai.
According to the study, crowdsourced data is able to identify hotspots and has potential for real-time monitoring and the data can further be used to develop a flood forecasting framework and effective decision-making in case of natural disasters. 

[...]

Aniket Navalkar, a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies of IIT Bombay, said "We are retrieving and analysing flood-related tweets during monsoon to validate flood levels predicted by flood modelling techniques, and to develop citizen-driven 'flood risk' maps. We are also collaborating with [local institutions] to install sensors and detect rise in water levels in certain catchments."

[....]

The study explored usability of crowdsourced data to identify flood hotspots and extracting reliable flood information of the past. Flood-related data was filtered and retrieved from Twitter and validity of retrieved data was confirmed by comparing it with volunteered geographic information. Twitter data was cross-verified with the 'height above the nearest drainage' map.

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Hazards Flood
Themes Community-based DRR Risk identification and assessment
Country and region India
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