Flood-crisis network to rely on public reports

The concept is to integrate the flood-report system of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry – at www.floodthailand.net – and the geographic-information system developed by Chulalongkorn University to provide real-time situation reports and allow people to report flood information from their locations into the system.

This integration of the ICT Ministry’s and Chulalongkorn University’s flood-report systems is aimed at providing real-time flood information, developed by people, for the people. It works as a crowdsourcing model.

ICT Minister Anudit Nakornthap said www.floodthailand.net would link up the Thai Crisis Planner & Reporter system from today. People can also access shared flood information at www.floodthailand.net and at Thaicrisis.Chula.ac.th.

“The joining of hands and the integration of the systems will help people to keep in touch with real-time flood information from any area,” Anudit said. “It offers both official information from the authorities and non-official news developed by people from around Bangkok who are now in the location of floods.”

Sanphet Chunithipaisan, an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of engineering who developed this system, said people who access it would be allowed to post info such as flood levels and water flow trends. The system also allows people to post photos of the flood situation.

“People can access the system via the website through a browser via personal computer or mobile phone, and can also access via an application called ‘Flood Rest’,” Sanphet said.

The system has two subsystems – Crisis Reporter and Crisis Planner. Crisis Reporter provides flood information while Crisis Planner allows people to check the water level in their location.

“Initially, we do not have the admin to monitor and to approve information posted by people. It is based on their honour to put out real flood information. But we also have a ‘vote’ system; information with a lot of ‘no’ votes will be considered as not qualified and will be deleted,” Sanphet said.

“We want the system to be based on crowdsourcing and social checking. Its beauty is to have a wide range of information from people. Authorities alone cannot cover the wide range of flood information in detail.”