New phone alerts for extreme weather may prevent casualties in India
Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - 14:30
in Earth & Climate
When Cyclone Phailin hit India in late 2013, it became the largest storm to batter the subcontinent in over a decade. The storm affected more than 12 million people in India and neighboring countries, and required mass evacuations. These evacuations revealed an urgent need for an effective alert system which could forewarn the majority of the population. A new paper details how computer science undergraduates have created image based mobile phone alerts, connected to the Weather Research and Forecasting system.