Latest news with #earlywarningsystem
France 24
01-08-2025
- Climate
- France 24
Landslide-prone Nepal tests AI-powered warning system
Tamang contributes to an AI-powered early warning system that uses rainfall and ground movement data, local observations and satellite imagery to predict landslides up to weeks in advance, according to its developers at the University of Melbourne. From her home in Kimtang village in the hills of northwest Nepal, 29-year-old Tamang sends photos of the water level to experts in the capital Kathmandu, a five-hour drive to the south. "Our village is located in difficult terrain, and landslides are frequent here, like many villages in Nepal," Tamang told AFP. Every year during the monsoon season, floods and landslides wreak havoc across South Asia, killing hundreds of people. Nepal is especially vulnerable due to unstable geology, shifting rainfall patterns and poorly planned development. As a mountainous country, it is already "highly prone" to landslides, said Rajendra Sharma, an early warning expert at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. "And climate change is fuelling them further. Shifting rainfall patterns, rain instead of snowfall in high altitudes and even increase in wildfires are triggering soil erosion," Sharma told AFP. Saving lives Landslides killed more than 300 people last year and were responsible for 70 percent of monsoon-linked deaths, government data shows. Tamang knows the risks first hand. When she was just five years old, her family and dozens of others relocated after soil erosion threatened their village homes. They moved about a kilometre (0.6 miles) uphill, but a strong 2015 earthquake left the area even more unstable, prompting many families to flee again. "The villagers here have lived in fear," Tamang said. "But I am hopeful that this new early warning system will help save lives." The landslide forecasting platform was developed by Australian professor Antoinette Tordesillas with partners in Nepal, Britain and Italy. Its name, SAFE-RISCCS, is an acronym of a complex title -- Spatiotemporal Analytics, Forecasting and Estimation of Risks from Climate Change Systems. "This is a low-cost but high-impact solution, one that's both scientifically informed and locally owned," Tordesillas told AFP. Professor Basanta Adhikari from Nepal's Tribhuvan University, who is involved in the project, said that similar systems were already in use in several other countries, including the United States and China. "We are monitoring landslide-prone areas using the same principles that have been applied abroad, adapted to Nepal's terrain," he told AFP. "If the system performs well during this monsoon season, we can be confident that it will work in Nepal as well, despite the country's complex Himalayan terrain." In Nepal, it is being piloted in two high-risk areas: Kimtang in Nuwakot district and Jyotinagar in Dhading district. Early warnings Tamang's data is handled by technical advisers like Sanjaya Devkota, who compares it against a threshold that might indicate a landslide. "We are still in a preliminary stage, but once we have a long dataset, the AI component will automatically generate a graphical view and alert us based on the rainfall forecast," Devkota said. "Then we report to the community, that's our plan." The experts have been collecting data for two months, but will need a data set spanning a year or two for proper forecasting, he added. Eventually, the system will deliver a continuously updated landslide risk map, helping decision makers and residents take preventive actions and make evacuation plans. The system "need not be difficult or resource-intensive, especially when it builds on the community's deep local knowledge and active involvement", Tordesillas said. Asia suffered more climate and weather-related hazards than any other region in 2023, according to UN data, with floods and storms the most deadly and costly. And while two-thirds of the region have early warning systems for disasters in place, many other vulnerable countries have little coverage. In the last decade, Nepal has made progress on flood preparedness, installing 200 sirens along major rivers and actively involving communities in warning efforts. The system has helped reduce flooding deaths, said Binod Parajuli, a flood expert with the government's hydrology department. "However, we have not been able to do the same for landslides because predicting them is much more complicated," he said. © 2025 AFP
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Landslide-prone Nepal tests AI-powered warning system
Every morning, Nepali primary school teacher Bina Tamang steps outside her home and checks the rain gauge, part of an early warning system in one of the world's most landslide-prone regions. Tamang contributes to an AI-powered early warning system that uses rainfall and ground movement data, local observations and satellite imagery to predict landslides up to weeks in advance, according to its developers at the University of Melbourne. From her home in Kimtang village in the hills of northwest Nepal, 29-year-old Tamang sends photos of the water level to experts in the capital Kathmandu, a five-hour drive to the south. "Our village is located in difficult terrain, and landslides are frequent here, like many villages in Nepal," Tamang told AFP. Every year during the monsoon season, floods and landslides wreak havoc across South Asia, killing hundreds of people. Nepal is especially vulnerable due to unstable geology, shifting rainfall patterns and poorly planned development. As a mountainous country, it is already "highly prone" to landslides, said Rajendra Sharma, an early warning expert at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. "And climate change is fuelling them further. Shifting rainfall patterns, rain instead of snowfall in high altitudes and even increase in wildfires are triggering soil erosion," Sharma told AFP. - Saving lives - Landslides killed more than 300 people last year and were responsible for 70 percent of monsoon-linked deaths, government data shows. Tamang knows the risks first hand. When she was just five years old, her family and dozens of others relocated after soil erosion threatened their village homes. They moved about a kilometre (0.6 miles) uphill, but a strong 2015 earthquake left the area even more unstable, prompting many families to flee again. "The villagers here have lived in fear," Tamang said. "But I am hopeful that this new early warning system will help save lives." The landslide forecasting platform was developed by Australian professor Antoinette Tordesillas with partners in Nepal, Britain and Italy. Its name, SAFE-RISCCS, is an acronym of a complex title -- Spatiotemporal Analytics, Forecasting and Estimation of Risks from Climate Change Systems. "This is a low-cost but high-impact solution, one that's both scientifically informed and locally owned," Tordesillas told AFP. Professor Basanta Adhikari from Nepal's Tribhuvan University, who is involved in the project, said that similar systems were already in use in several other countries, including the United States and China. "We are monitoring landslide-prone areas using the same principles that have been applied abroad, adapted to Nepal's terrain," he told AFP. "If the system performs well during this monsoon season, we can be confident that it will work in Nepal as well, despite the country's complex Himalayan terrain." In Nepal, it is being piloted in two high-risk areas: Kimtang in Nuwakot district and Jyotinagar in Dhading district. - Early warnings - Tamang's data is handled by technical advisers like Sanjaya Devkota, who compares it against a threshold that might indicate a landslide. "We are still in a preliminary stage, but once we have a long dataset, the AI component will automatically generate a graphical view and alert us based on the rainfall forecast," Devkota said. "Then we report to the community, that's our plan." The experts have been collecting data for two months, but will need a data set spanning a year or two for proper forecasting, he added. Eventually, the system will deliver a continuously updated landslide risk map, helping decision makers and residents take preventive actions and make evacuation plans. The system "need not be difficult or resource-intensive, especially when it builds on the community's deep local knowledge and active involvement", Tordesillas said. Asia suffered more climate and weather-related hazards than any other region in 2023, according to UN data, with floods and storms the most deadly and costly. And while two-thirds of the region have early warning systems for disasters in place, many other vulnerable countries have little coverage. In the last decade, Nepal has made progress on flood preparedness, installing 200 sirens along major rivers and actively involving communities in warning efforts. The system has helped reduce flooding deaths, said Binod Parajuli, a flood expert with the government's hydrology department. "However, we have not been able to do the same for landslides because predicting them is much more complicated," he said. "Such technologies are absolutely necessary if Nepal wants to reduce its monsoon toll." str/pm/abh/dhw/sco
Arab News
28-07-2025
- Arab News
Google admits failures over Turkiye earthquake phone warnings
LONDON: Google has admitted that its early-warning system for earthquakes failed to correctly report the severity of Turkiye's deadly 2023 earthquake to users, the BBC reported on Monday. Had the Android software reported the information accurately, at least 10 million people within 98 miles of the epicenter could have been sent a maximum-level alert, giving them up to 35 seconds to find safety. However, just 469 urgent 'take action' warnings were sent ahead of the first 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with at least 500,000 people receiving a lower-level warning. The lesser message only warns recipients of 'light shaking' and does not override the do-not-disturb setting on phones. The US tech giant previously told the BBC that its warning system had 'performed well' during the disaster. Until its most recent investigation, the BBC had not understood the full extent of the Google software's failings, it reported. Google's software, named Android Earthquake Alerts, is described by the tech giant as a 'global safety net.' It operates in almost 100 countries, many of which lack an official warning system for earthquakes. AEA is operated by Google, not national governments, and it works on Android devices, which make up the majority of the global phone market over Apple devices. Similar to the global split in market share, about 70 percent of phones in Turkiye are Android devices. The February 2023 disaster, which struck southeastern Turkiye, killed more than 55,000 people and injured at least 100,000. AEA detects the severity of earthquakes by compiling data received from Android mobile phones in a given area. However, during the Turkiye earthquake, the software failed to accurately detect its severity and send out the necessary number of 'take action' warnings, which set off a loud alarm on users' phones. A company spokesperson said: 'We continue to improve the system based on what we learn in each earthquake. Every earthquake early warning system grapples with the same challenge — tuning algorithms for large-magnitude events.' As many people were asleep when the first quake struck at 4:17 a.m., a 'take action' warning, which overrides silent and do-not-disturb modes, would have been necessary. Google researchers cited 'limitations to the detection algorithms' when discussing the failures in a report published by the Science journal. The AEA software estimated shaking at 4.5-4.9 on the moment magnitude scale for the first quake, when its real strength was 7.8. The second quake later in the day saw 'take action' alerts sent to 8,158 phones in the area, while the lesser 'be aware' message was dispatched to almost 4 million phones. In later simulations of the first quake, AEA sent 10 million urgent 'take action' alerts to users most at risk. A further 67 million 'be aware' alerts were sent to phones located further away from the epicenter of the simulated quake. Elizabeth Reddy, assistant professor at Colorado School of Mines, told the BBC that she is 'really frustrated' that it took so long for the software failings to be revealed. 'We're not talking about a little event — people died — and we didn't see a performance of this warning in the way we would like.'
Bloomberg
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Need to Prepare Better: George P. Bush on Texas Floods
George P. Bush, Former Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, shares his thoughts on Texas needing to pass legislation to create an early warning system for natural disasters. He also talks about how state & federal governments need to adapt to a changing environment and if there should be changes to FEMA. George P. Bush speaks with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's 'Balance of Power.' (Source: Bloomberg)
