Google's AI can predict floods with 75% precision

Floods are among the most common -- and deadly -- natural disasters in the world. Every year, they're responsible for tens of thousands of fatalities and hundreds of millions of displaced homeowners. And they're extraordinarily costly -- in the U.S. alone from 2005 to 2014, the average flood claim was $42,000, and total flood insurance claims averaged more than $3.5 billion per year. Accurate flood forecasting is a desirable goal, needless to say; according to some studies, early warning systems can reduce deaths and economic damages by over a third. Fortunately, it's one scientists continue to inch toward with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In a new paper ("ML for Flood Forecasting at Scale") published on the preprint server Arxiv.org,