Is your house at risk of being flooded in 2050? If Karthik Mukkavilli and his team of researchers seem focused on a negative future, it’s only because they want us to be better prepared for the challenges that will come with climate change. Today, they’re using artificial intelligence to accurately assess the risks of flooding in our homes and, at the same time, raise awareness.

Working on a project entitled “Visualizing Climate Change”, Karthik is helping develop a website and mobile app that will calculate the likelihood of an address or neighbourhood being flooded. If the location is deemed to be at risk, the AI system will produce a realistic image of the site with the projected water level.

For this determined researcher, artificial intelligence isn’t something you should develop in a vacuum, but rather “in a way that will solve social problems that can address society as a whole.”

Raised in New Zealand, by Indian parents, Karthik chose Montreal out of the numerous cities that tried to woo him, because he wanted to pursue his research under the direction of Yoshua Bengio, professor at the University of Montreal and founder of Mila. “Montreal is a world leader in AI, and Mila’s human-centric, socially-relevant approach are perfectly aligned with my values.”