Imagine if South Carolina had a system that identified flooded areas, risks of flooding and assessed damage in real time during the devastating 2015 “thousand-year” flood. Erfan Goharian and Song Wang, engineering professors at University of South Carolina, are hoping to do just that by building a flood prediction and early warning system for the Midlands using the latest artificial intelligence technology. The two, who were awarded a grant from Microsoft to undertake the project, want the dataset completed and available to the public by the end of this year. The researchers are hoping to obtain additional monies to further the project. The system would use artificial intelligence to analyze images of flooded areas and predict the damage they could cause. Once an image is recognized by the artificial intelligence, unmanned drones would be dispatched to further confirm the flooding. Also cameras located around Columbia would be used for capturing photos. These could be either existing cameras – such as street cameras or traffic cameras – or newly installed cameras to accompany the system, Goharian said. More at: Carolina News & Reporter.