George Cheng thinks a lot about flooding.
In his home state North Carolina, hurricanes and tropical storms cause annual flooding that damages homes, farms, and crop fields. Cheng is also close to people from India whose families were affected by the heavy 2023 floods.
In the not-so-distant future, the 18-year-old MIT freshman plans to unveil an app that forecasts local flooding in a new way, better informing those at risk and helping them evacuate in time.
The concept earned Cheng, along with a team of three fellow teens, first place and $50,000 at this year’s Earth Prize competition in May. Cheng plans to use his share to help pay for his college degree.
A new way to visualize flood risk
The Earth Prize, launched in 2021, is the world’s largest environmental competition for teens. Competitors submit physical models and computational projects designed to address issues related to waste, pollution, the environment, and other themes.
Cheng and his team decided to focus on the widespread threat to human lives that climate change poses, particularly via flooding.
An estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide are at risk of devastating flooding that can destroy homes and claim lives. As climate change drives up sea levels and increases precipitation, experts project flooding to worsen.
Cheng and his teammates hope their project, called FloodGate, can help people at risk.
The problem with current forecasts is that it can be hard to interpret how a storm or flash flood will affect you directly. For example, if the weather forecast says it’s going to rain five inches in your town, it’s hard to know what kind of effect that will have on your home and whether you should evacuate.
That’s what FloodGate eventually aims to answer.
For The Earth Prize, the team designed a computer model to construct a 3D map of a 100-square-mile region.
Then, they combined that model with AI and real-time weather forecasts to predict detailed flood risks for that region.
The model is still in its early stage, said Yung Yoong Sze, an Earth Prize mentor who consulted with the FloodGate team.
Ultimately, the team wants to use their model to translate weather forecasts into pictures. So when you open the app, you can see the physical consequences of five inches of rain in your area because it’ll show you how much of your home or crop field could be underwater.
“Our model kind of puts the numbers with the images. I think it’s more effective than just the numbers itself,” Cheng said.
What sets FloodGate apart
The team’s novel flood forecasting system beat 979 other competing projects for first place.
“What it had is amazing programming, a very useful app, and fantastic broader application that could actually save lives and have a positive impact on the environment,” said Jonathan Baillie, another Earth Prize mentor who worked with the FloodGate team.
The Earth Prize is not a typical science fair competition where competitors either work alone or with teammates. The Earth Foundation, which sponsors The Earth Prize and is now accepting applications for 2025, provides each competing team with resources and expert mentors to help them develop and advance their projects before the final presentation.
“I could help them position it and talk about why what they had done was so amazing and how it could be more broadly applied globally,” said Baillie, who is president of the nonprofit conservation organization Natural State.
FloodGate’s model only works for US locations, but the team hopes to eventually expand.
That will require broader data sets that can incorporate information from places outside the US, including Africa and Southeast Asia, Yoong Sze said.
Showing flood risk is only part of the final vision. Ultimately, Cheng and the team want their product to have a built-in warning system, “kind of like a hurricane evacuation system,” Cheng said.
Cheng said the team hopes to unveil the app by the end of 2025.
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