Chennai: To avert the major floods like in 2015, Chennai will soon have an artificial intelligence (AI) system for flood forecasting and management in urban areas, R. Chidambaram, former Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India, said. According to him, this should help the city avert major floods like the one of 2015.
Speaking at the 14th graduation day of Anna University’s four departments here on Wednesday he said, “The expert system has features for flood forecasting along with flood inundation maps and possible means of managing it through appropriate interventions to deal with any future events.”
Prestigious institutions like Isro, IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore, Anna University and ministry of earth sciences are involved in the project funded by the principal scientific advisor’s office.
“The design of the system involves the coupling of regional weather forecast model, tidal flood model, urban overland flow model and storm water drainage model, each handling enormous amount of data,” he explained.
The real-time operational system will be set up at The Integrated Coastal and Marine Area Management with coordination from Tamil Nadu government. It is expected to be put in place very soon.
“After completion of this project, similar expert systems can be taken up in other urban areas like Mumbai. Such expert systems with machine learning capabilities, can be considered an AI system,” Chidambaram said.
Anna University Vice-Chancellor M.K. Surappa, Registrar S.Ganesan and others participated in the event.
In all 4,127 students from four campuses — College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras Institute of Technology, Chrompet, Alagappa College of Technology and School of Architecture and Planning — received their degree certificates at the event.
