Machine Intelligence for Floods and the Built Environment Under Climate Change (Ideas Track)

Kate Duffy (Northeastern University); Auroop Ganguly (Northeastern University)

Paper PDF Cite
Disaster Management and Relief Extreme Weather

Abstract

While intensification of precipitation extremes has been attributed to anthropogenic climate change using statistical analysis and physics-based numerical models, understanding floods in a climate context remains a grand challenge. Meanwhile, an increasing volume of Earth science data from climate simulations, remote sensing, and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools offers opportunity for data-driven insight and action plans. Defining Machine Intelligence (MI) broadly to include machine learning and network science, here we develop a vision and use preliminary results to showcase how scientific understanding of floods can be improved in a climate context and translated to impacts with a focus on Critical Lifeline Infrastructure Networks (CLIN).