How can AI help a community prepare for a flood?

Originally published on September 9, 2025 | Last modified on September 11, 2025

This resource is based on AI Quests, a game-based learning experience designed to teach middle school students (ages 11-14) about AI, produced by Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. For more information, visit the AI Quests website.

Overview

Floods are among the world’s most devastating natural disasters, affecting millions of people each year. Today, scientists are using AI flood forecasting models to predict when and where floods may occur, giving communities more time to prepare and stay safe. But these predictions are not perfect. Data can be messy, and humans have many important steps to take in order to build trustworthy AI models that can help with decision-making. In this lesson, students will play Market Marshes, an AI Quest to explore how AI predicts floods, consider challenges with data accuracy, and reflect on the human responsibilities involved in making decisions with AI.

AI & Science
50 minutes

Created by Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning

Digital Materials

Teacher guide

Objectives

By the end of this quest, students will be able to:

Describe a real-world example of how humans use AI predictions to make decisions and solve problems in society.
Explain the role of data in training an AI model and how human choices in data selection change what the model learns.
Identify key stages in the AI lifecycle (i.e., data preparation, model training and testing, and deployment) and their relevance in building a flood prediction model.
Identify important data types used in flood forecasting, such as rainfall and terrain data.

Questions explored

How can AI be used as a tool to help communities prepare for floods?
What problems can occur if data is inaccurate or incomplete?
Why do humans still need to make decisions, even when AI gives predictions?

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Created by Jacob Lawton, CRAFT Fellow 2024-2025

Adapted by 'Joba Adisa