In Mumbai, India, heavy rainfall can lead to severe floods and waterlogging. It’s important for researchers to monitor these conditions in real time to predict and prepare for floods.

But how can they gather this information quickly? Well, a team of researchers from IIT Bombay found a solution by using Twitter to collect data from people who share their experiences during heavy rainfall.

Crowdsourcing Flood Data: Twitter’s Flood Power!

• Researchers from IIT Bombay led by Dr. Subimal Ghosh used an automated program to collect flood-related data from Twitter. The program gathered information about the level of waterlogging and the location of flooded areas.
  
  
• The researchers tested the effectiveness of this crowdsourced data by analyzing tweets from a heavy rainfall event in July 2022. They also looked at flood-related tweets from previous years to create flood maps for those periods.
  
  
• The researchers found that areas with weather stations that received heavy rainfall and were situated in low-lying areas were more likely to experience flooding. They noticed a consistency between the crowdsourced data and the rainfall data obtained from the automatic weather stations.
  
  
• Crowdsourced data from Twitter has proven to be a valuable resource for monitoring floods in real time. It provides quick and pertinent information about flooded areas, helping researchers understand the ground conditions and predict floods in advance.
  
  
• The researchers are now developing a portal and an app to collect and share this data, which will be available to the public in the near future. By using this technology, they hope to improve flood forecasting and make Mumbai safer during the monsoon season.

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