WatchDuty app tracks wildfires and now flooding
WatchDuty app tracks wildfires and now flooding
What started out five years ago, as a local North Bay app to monitor wildfires in real time, is now a national non-profit that now has a second life-saving specialty: nationwide, localized flooding.
GREENBRAE, Calif. - What started out five years ago, as a local North Bay app to monitor wildfires in real time, is now a national non-profit that now has a second life-saving specialty: nationwide, localized flooding.
Wildfire tracking
What we know:
WatchDuty has 16 million active users across the nation. Add in floods, that number will surely skyrocket.
Watch Duty is free, real-time app, that alerts users by tracking wildfire ignitions, direction and growth.
"And so I brought together the technical talent and I brought all the human beings who were doing this job. We put them all together and now we do this 24 seven across all 50 states," said WatchDuty.org founder John Mills.
Watch Duty is directly connected to official data sources such as the National Weather Service, DWR, Cal Fire, and others. It also uses legions of people, mainly experienced volunteers, including active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders.
"I need people who are going to listen to radios 24-7 a day, because that is where firefighters and firefighting tactics take place," said Mills.
They monitor first responder radio communications post vetted information in real time, plus observations from those near or at the scene.
"We're taking all this data and making it more consumable and more suited for humans," said Mills.
Flood watch
Now, for flooding, WatchDuty added official rain, river and creek flood gauge data as well as more on site massive human reporting.
"Nowadays. A.I. makes that easier, but it's still, we're doing very large scale computing here. And so we're doing millions of daily active users a day when it gets really bad, we are doing a hundred thousand requests in a second," said the founder.
A combination of king tides, storm surge, high winds and Corte Madera Creek backing up pretty much guarantees that Greenbrae will get flooding much as it did back in January.
During the Greenbrae flooding in early January, Robin Lee got the warning too late to avoid serious damage to his business.
"Now that would be a great tool to use to prepare us for flooding and help us do anything getting off the floor," said Mr. Lee. "I think that's a great idea. I love the ideas, especially living on Lucky Drive with all the flooding. A lot of up aren't kept up to date and there really are no apps like this," said Greenbrae resident Julie Jay. "I think that would be wonderful. I think we are as pro-active as we can be because we have not been getting any help from the county at all," said Greenbrae resident Rhoda Becker.
But now, a new twist just this month.
"I have never seen high tides in the summertime that actually flooded," said Becker.
That's very likely attributable, in large part, to sea level rise since adverse weather conditions were not present.