Devastating floods are making headlines worldwide, but advances in deep learning for detection could turn uncertainty over evacuations into yesterday's news.
Applying a data set of 66,000 images, data scientists have created an ensemble of models for predicting flood zones. And the models are generalizable for application to new geographies.
The findings, published in a recent paper, will be discussed in a presentation at the NVIDIA GTC 2021 conference next month.
The pioneering effort landed second place at the Emerging Techniques in Computational Intelligence (ETCI) 2021 competition on flood detection. It came in just a hair behind, the first-place effort on what's known as the intersection over union score, or IOU, which measures overlap in image segmentation.
For Siddha Ganju, one of the paper's authors, floods aren't just something you read about or see in viral videos. When she was six years old, her father was driving in northern India, and his car was overturned in a flash flood. He escaped the car and was fortunate to make it to land alive, swimming past snakes, but he couldn't contact his family for nearly a day.
This was before mobile phones, and we were waiting for him for a long time, said Ganju, a senior data scientist at NVIDIA. Flooding isn't like a swimming pool, it's not something you can swim through. The current is very fast and filled with dangerous debris like fast-moving fallen trees.
India's monsoon season can hammer rainfall of 3 feet or more during a day, suddenly bursting rivers with a tsunami-like force of water. Earthquakes can prompt sudden flooding as well.
Floods cause more than $40 billion in damages worldwide a year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Flood Segmentation in Seconds The ETCI competition asked contestants to use 66,000 SAR Sentinel-1 labeled images with pixels that show before and after a flood. Participants were challenged to develop semantic segmentation models using the data so that they could be applied to new unlabeled images to perform inference on potential flood zones.
Satellite imagery of Florence, North Carolina, depicting water coverage. The images - provided by NASA's Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team - included Bangladesh; Nebraska; North Alabama; Red River, North Dakota; Florence, North Carolina; and other regions.
Ganju teamed up for the ETCI competition with Sayak Paul, a machine learning engineer at e-commerce startup Carted. The results showed that their models, running on NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs, can create a segmentation for flood zones spanning roughly 24,000 square miles in just 3 seconds.
Training Model Ensembles Ganju and Paul developed an ensemble of models with UNet and UNet++, a pair of convolutional neural network architectures used for image segmentation. They can analyze pixels for borders between things like land and water.
The duo's best performing model was trained in multiple iterations, with the output of each stage feeding into the next stage.
NVIDIA V100 GPUs in the cloud powered the training for the ensemble of models, and all the inference was done on them as well.
Developing for Social Impact Their generalizable method can be easily applied. Specific images of annotated coast lines, deserts, urban areas or others aren't needed, as it's all built into the model. This enables others to harness the work for any region, possibly just updating the data set to improve it with transfer learning.
Ganju and Paul hope their code, posted on GitHub, is picked up by local experts in science disciplines who can improve and deploy it for emergency systems around the world. They are in talks with the United Nations Satellite Centre, which is interested in testing the AI to improve its flood detection tool and disaster response system, said Ganju.
A lot of people could be directly or indirectly impacted by this, she said.
North America Stories
12/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Everything You Need to Know for Next Week's Big Sho...
12/12/2025
Hailey Gates at the Atropia premiere (photo by George Pimentel / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)...
12/12/2025
CONWAY, Ark. In a notable example of how the elimination of Federal federal funding is forcing public stations to make massive cuts and changes in the way they...
12/12/2025
Wisycom and DPA Microphones announce the appointment of Ren Moerch as Group Product Director, Wireless, a strategic leadership role that will guide the combine...
12/12/2025
SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists, and engineers, in conjuncture with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the Entertainment Technolog...
12/12/2025
Keepit, the vendor-independent, cloud-native data protection provider, today announced a strategic go-to-market relationship in Poland with Ingram Micro, a lead...
12/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking Open Gate 48P RAW recording w...
12/12/2025
Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) once again played a critical role in delivering flawless wireless coordination and support at the 2025 Latin Grammy Awards a...
12/12/2025
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), together with the Video Services Forum (VSF), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the European Broadc...
12/12/2025
DHD audio will demonstrate the latest additions to its range of digital audio production solutions on Booth 321 in Hall B6 at Hamburg Open 2026. The show will b...
12/12/2025
Chaos today announces the release of V-Ray for Blender, update 2, bringing its award-winning rendering technology to even more Blender users by adding support f...
12/12/2025
Lighting specialist UltraLEDs has launched Precision LED Tape, a high-CRI lighting solution designed specifically for professional film, TV, and studio use.
P...
12/12/2025
Zixi, the Emmy Award-winning leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that Roi Sasson has joined the company as Vice President, Engineer...
12/12/2025
BitFire (bitfire.tv), the leader in software-defined live production and IP transmission, today announced a strategic partnership with Appear, a leader in high-...
12/12/2025
LOS ANGELES The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today said futurist Robert Tercek, creative technologist Jessie Hughes from Leonardo.AI and Emmy-winnin...
12/12/2025
HUDSON, Mass. BitFire and Appear have struck a strategic partnership aimed at offering broadcasters, sports leagues and streaming platforms a faster, more flexi...
12/12/2025
The broadcast industry is evolving faster than ever. #IPWorkflows #remoteproduction, and next-gen audio systems are reshaping how teams design, deliver, and sca...
12/12/2025
LOS ANGELES The payroll and production accounting platform Wrapbook has announced the acquisition of Cinapse, a modern scheduling platform for film and televisi...
12/12/2025
DEHLI Ross Video has announced that it is expanding and restructuring its commercial and technical teams in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation...
12/12/2025
LONDON Following the success of its UK launch in January 2025, Rise AV, the global not-for-profit initiative dedicated to supporting and advancing women in the ...
12/12/2025
SAN FRANCISCO Ad-supported streaming service Tubi next week will launch Matter Casting, a new casting standard that will enable seamless mobile-to-TV viewing di...
12/12/2025
LOS ANGELES The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today said futurist Robert Tercek, creative technologist Jessie Hughes from Leonardo.AI and Emmy-winnin...
12/12/2025
In Las Vegas's T-Mobile Arena, fans of the Golden Knights are getting more than just hockey - they're getting a taste of the future. ADAM, a robot devel...
12/12/2025
Scripps Research team pioneers an efficient way to stereoselectively add fluorine to drug-like molecules A new method uses a novel catalyst and inexpensive fluo...
11/12/2025
ESPN's Aims for Spectacular With Heisman Trophy ShowEvent firsts include 1080p HDR production airing on both national broadcast and cableBy Dan Daley, Audio...
11/12/2025
SVG Students To Watch: Frankie Patton, University of ColoradoThe 2025 grad is hitting the ground running as a PA on national broadcastsBy Brandon Costa, Directo...
11/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Technology Exhibits Preview, Part 3By SVG Staff
Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 7:24 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2...
11/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: What Makes Gen Z, X, and Y Fans Tick? Dave Gavant of WSC Sports Go...
11/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: 5G, MXL, Spectrum Loss, and Outerspace on Tap for Tues...
11/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: David Levy, Turner Titan and Master of Al...
11/12/2025
SVG Launches Follow the Money' Podcast: Go Inside the Sports Media Biz with...
11/12/2025
A Deep Dive Inside Game Creek Video's Bird and Magic Mobile Units, Home to A...
11/12/2025
How Sound Effects for Monsters Funday Football' Emulated the Sonic Soul of ...
11/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: CSP Mobile Productions' Len Chase on Upgrading Tr...
11/12/2025
New satellites for the SDA Tranche 1 Tracking program in production at L3Harris&...
11/12/2025
The Meadowlands system, a compact and mobile version of the CCS, uses ground-based radio frequency units to disrupt satellite communications....
11/12/2025
The L3Harris demonstration united tactical communications devices, counter-UAS c...
11/12/2025
Throughout 2025, L3Harris delivered innovative solutions to U.S. and allied warfighters across every domain.
With an unrelenting commitment to excellence, our...
11/12/2025
A Majority of the World's Population (51%) Identify As Soccer Fans
The 2025 MLB postseason notched 58.2 billion viewing minutes, up +24% from the prior y...
11/12/2025
WALTHAM, Mass. Video-over-IP software provider Zixi said Roi Sasson has joined the company as vice president, engineering....
11/12/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. In a move that highlights the growing competition between broadcasters and CTV platforms for local advertising, LG Ad Solutions has announ...
11/12/2025
Boston Conservatory Earns Several Best of Accolades in 2025 Highlights include a faculty Grammy win, a seventh consecutive year on Playbill's list of co...
11/12/2025
RASTATT, Germany Lawo and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) have partnered to launch the SMPTE ST 2110 Practical Lab, an immersive ...
11/12/2025
PHILADELPHIA Comcasts Xfinity operating brand has announced the launch of new national video plans with all-in pricing that the operator said will provide custo...
11/12/2025
After eight years of declines, MoffettNathansons new Cord Cutting Monitor for Q3 2025 shows that pay TV subscribers to linear TV packages rose by 303,000, the f...
11/12/2025
Happy Holidays from Berklee Enjoy this years holiday student-performance video.
December 10, 2025
By
Office of the President
Dear Berklee community,
As w...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
The Teaser Trailer and the Key Art of Motorvalley, the New Ser...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
Trailer for the Fourth Season of Alpha Males
Entertainment
11 December 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
DERECONSTRUCT OR DIE
Do...
11/12/2025
Unveiling what it describes as the most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work, OpenAI launched GPT-5.2 today. The model was trained and deplo...
Devastating floods are making headlines worldwide, but advances in deep learning for detection could turn uncertainty over evacuations into yesterday's news.
