Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English.
Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English. A new study documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to change that, developing a comprehensive translation program that delivers life-saving forecasts and alerts in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, French and other languages.
The new multidisciplinary study was led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences professor Joseph Trujillo-Falcón and NWS scientist Monica Bozeman and is published in the journal Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems.
“Translating weather forecasts has always been a critical, time-consuming task, often added to the plates of bilingual forecasters managing full operational responsibilities, but it provides information for the 68.8 million people who do not speak English at home,” said Trujillo-Falcón, who also leads the ALERTAS lab in partnership with the department of communication at Illinois.
Read More: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Photo Credit: ELG21 via Pixabay
