Earthquake, flood, hurricane: Google Maps adds tools to help you navigate a crisis

Google is not in the weather business, per se; it is

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tapping into such sources as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Japan Meteorological Agency (for hurricanes) and the United States Geological Survey (for earthquakes).

Here's how the company breaks down the coming features:

Hurricanes

Leading up the storm, Google will display a crisis notification card if you are in or near an impacted area. You'll see a hurricane forecast cone that shows the predicted trajectory of the storm, accompanied by information of when it is likely to hit.

Earthquakes

If an earthquake strikes, you can tap on an information card to summon a color-coded "shakemap," which helps you visualize the epicenter and magnitude of the quake in surrounding areas.

Google says the hurricane forecast cones and earthquake shakemaps will begin rolling out on iOS, Android, desktop computers and the mobile web during the coming weeks.

Flooding

Flood forecast visualizations are also coming soon, but initially only in India, where Google says more than 20% of global flood-related fatalities occur. Such forecasts start in Patna, then expand to the Ganges and Brahmaputra regions on Android, desktop, and on the mobile web.

Google Maps product manager Hannah Stulberg says the river-level data used in the flooding forecasts comes from the Central Water Commission where it is then fed into Google's own machine learning models.

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-earthquake-hurricane-google-tools-crisis.html