πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’» Development

πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»
Karthi Gangavarapu
Creator & Developer
🌟
Atharv Gupta
Creator & Developer
🌟
Aadya Gupta
Creator & Developer
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GitHub Copilot
AI Pair Programmer

🌦️ Weather & Climate Data

Primary Weather API
Provides current meteorological conditions, 16-day forecasts, historical daily weather coverage, and elevation services that support the platform's report generation pipeline.
Geocoding
Free reverse geocoding API used to resolve coordinates to city/state/country display names.
Geocoding (Fallback)
Open-source geocoding service. Used as a secondary lookup for location name resolution.

🌊 Flood & Hydrology Data

Federal Flood History
Supplies historical disaster declaration records used to contextualize jurisdiction-level flood history. A conservative fallback table is used if the upstream service is temporarily inaccessible.
Real-Time Stream Gauges
Delivers live streamflow and gauge-height observations from USGS monitoring stations, supporting real-time hydrologic situational awareness.
Water Body Proximity
Queries OpenStreetMap hydrographic features such as rivers, streams, canals, and water bodies to estimate local proximity to drainage networks.
Elevation Data
Fast elevation lookups used for terrain-based flood risk factors. Also supports Open-Elevation and OpenTopography as fallbacks.
Routing Engine
Calculates evacuation routes with real road geometry, turn-by-turn directions, distance, and duration estimates.

πŸ“š Flood Risk Methodology & Sources

Research-backed weighting framework
Kazakis, N., Kougias, I., & Patsialis, T. (2015). Assessment of flood hazard areas at a regional scale using an index-based approach and Analytical Hierarchy Process. Science of the Total Environment, 538, 555–563. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.08.055
Used as a principal reference for balancing precipitation, drainage proximity, and terrain-related flood-susceptibility factors within the app's composite score.
Natural and anthropogenic flood factor prioritization
Stefanidis, S., & Stathis, D. (2013). Assessment of flood hazard based on natural and anthropogenic factors using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Natural Hazards, 68, 569–585. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0639-5
Informed the relative prominence of rainfall, slope/elevation, and drainage-related variables in the platform's hazard scoring logic.
GIS-AHP flood hazard mapping in urban settings
GigoviΔ‡, L., Pamučar, D., BajiΔ‡, Z., & Drobnjak, S. (2017). Application of GIS-Interval Rough AHP Methodology for Flood Hazard Mapping in Urban Areas. Water, 9(6), 360. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9060360
Reinforced the significance of river proximity, elevation, and rainfall intensity as defensible flood-hazard indicators in a practical decision-support environment.
Historical risk and resilience context
FEMA National Risk Index / Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool methodology. https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/
Supports the use of historical flood frequency and jurisdiction-level hazard context as a bounded component of the overall flood-risk assessment.
Operational hydrologic forecasting context
NOAA / National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service and operational hydrologic forecasting guidance. https://water.noaa.gov/
Supports the emphasis on observed precipitation, antecedent rainfall, and live gauge observations as primary operational indicators of near-term flood potential.

🧠 AI & Machine Learning

Image Classification Runtime
Runs the flood detection neural network directly in the browser using WebGL acceleration. No server round-trips needed.
Pre-Trained Feature Extractor
Lightweight convolutional neural network used as the feature backbone for the flood camera's transfer-learning classifier.
Vocabulary Enhancer
FloodWise NLP Engine
Custom regex-based vocabulary enhancement system with 60+ word-swap patterns to enrich community story submissions.

πŸ“Š Visualization & Interaction

Charts & Graphs
Interactive flood timeline with dual-axis precipitation bars and flood risk trend lines.
3D Water Simulation
Powers the augmented reality flood simulation with realistic semi-transparent water plane rendering.
AR Camera Overlay
Browser-native augmented reality for overlaying simulated flood levels on the user's real-world camera view.

πŸ—οΈ Infrastructure & Hosting

Web Framework
Lightweight Python web framework powering all API endpoints and page routing.
WSGI Server
Production-grade Python HTTP server used for deploying on Azure App Service.
Cloud Hosting
Canada Central region. Automatic builds via Oryx, git-push deployment, Python 3.11 runtime.
Database
Embedded database for community stories and alert subscriptions. Zero-config, serverless.
Font
Friendly rounded typeface used throughout the FloodWise interface.

πŸ› οΈ Tech Stack

Python 3.11 Flask Gunicorn SQLite Jinja2 JavaScript ES6+ TensorFlow.js MobileNet v2 Chart.js Three.js WebXR HTML5 Canvas CSS Grid / Flexbox Fetch API Notification API Service Worker Azure App Service Git

πŸ“‚ Open Data Sources

Map Data
Β© OpenStreetMap contributors. Water body, river, stream, and canal data used for proximity scoring. Licensed under ODbL.
Terrain Model
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data underpins elevation lookups via Open-Meteo and Earth Engine.

FloodWise is an educational and informational tool. It is not a substitute for official emergency alerts from NWS, FEMA, or local emergency management agencies. Always follow official guidance during flood events.

Built with πŸ’™ for community flood awareness.