In a collaborative public-academia effort, the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) will generate real-time flood maps of Mumbai using Twitter.
The initiative has been taken by Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies (IDPCS), IIT-B, Powai.
Flooding in the financial capital of Mumbai and other pockets of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region is a major issue during the monsoons.
“We are planning to generate real-time flood maps for #Mumbai using the power of @Twitter ! Tweet about flood scenes in your area this monsoon using #mumbaiflooddata / #mumbaiflood and geotagging to help us collect flood data,” the IDPCS tweeted.
“Students want to monitor Mumbai floods through crowdsourcing and making it online available for everyone, please help us this monsoon and coming monsoons. Together we can monitor the flood, when observed flood levels are not there/ not available to us,” said Subimal Ghosh, IDCS, Professor of Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Bombay.
The ICDS has appealed people to send details as per the format - “at xx am/pm, X area in X ward is flooded with water depth xx m/ cm/ ft (or ankle/knee/waist/one-man deep)”.
The flood maps will generate warnings based on real-time flood depth levels.
They will be further extended to monitoring and experimental forecasting.