Watch Duty Is Adding Flood Alerts to Its Wildfire App
Watch Duty Is Adding Flood Alerts to Its Wildfire App
Watch Duty 在其野火预警应用中新增洪水警报功能
Watch Duty, the wildfire alert app, is introducing flood alerts to its popular disaster-awareness service. This is the second disaster type to be broadly included, after wildfires; it’s available as a free update. If you have the app, you can subscribe to alerts in specific counties, and if there is a flood, Watch Duty will send you a push notification with more information about where it is and where it is spreading.
野火预警应用 Watch Duty 正在为其广受欢迎的灾害感知服务引入洪水警报功能。这是继野火之后，该平台广泛覆盖的第二种灾害类型；用户可通过免费更新获取此功能。如果你安装了该应用，可以订阅特定县区的警报。一旦发生洪水，Watch Duty 会向你发送推送通知，提供有关洪水位置及其蔓延方向的详细信息。
The nonprofit started in 2021 with a focus on California’s wildfires. The app has since expanded to the entire US, where it uses a combination of paid employee “reporters” and many more volunteers who monitor emergency responder radio channels and translate that information about disaster zones to app users.
该非营利组织成立于 2021 年，最初专注于加利福尼亚州的野火。此后，该应用已扩展至全美范围。它结合了付费员工“记者”和大量志愿者，通过监测应急响应人员的无线电频道，将灾区信息转化为易懂的内容推送给应用用户。
Watch Duty became a critical resource during the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles last year, providing real-time information about the fire’s movements that users came to rely on. In the year since, Watch Duty has capitalized on that increased recognition and brought in thousands of new users and partnerships, including one with Amazon’s Ring cameras that lets people share their Ring videos in Watch Duty if a fire is nearby.
去年洛杉矶 Palisades 和 Eaton 火灾期间，Watch Duty 成为了关键资源，它提供的火势实时动态信息深受用户信赖。在此后的一年里，Watch Duty 利用其日益提升的知名度，吸引了数以千计的新用户并建立了多项合作伙伴关系，其中包括与亚马逊 Ring 摄像头的合作——用户在火灾附近时，可以将 Ring 拍摄的视频分享到 Watch Duty 上。
Monitoring flooding takes a different approach than tracking wildfires. Floods tend to be more straightforward to monitor, because they usually have more predictable warning signs from official agencies. Barring a dam burst or other unexpected event, flood paths are easier to track.
监测洪水的方法与追踪野火有所不同。洪水监测通常更为直接，因为官方机构往往能提供更具预测性的预警信号。除非发生大坝决堤或其他突发事件，否则洪水的路径更容易追踪。
“The difference with floods is we do have more warning,” says John Mills, Watch Duty’s CEO. “So frankly, it’s a little bit easier in some regards.”
“洪水与野火的区别在于，我们确实有更多的预警时间，”Watch Duty 首席执行官 John Mills 表示，“所以坦率地说，在某些方面它更容易处理。”
Easier to track and report doesn’t mean floods are any less complicated than fires. Information about flooding comes from a variety of agencies in the US, like FEMA, the National Weather Service, the US Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The problem with that, Mills contends, is that it’s so much information from so many different sources that people have a hard time reconciling everything and getting a clear picture of what is an immediate concern in their vicinity. What he wants to do with Watch Duty is distill that information into a more straightforward outlook.
追踪和报告更容易，并不意味着洪水灾害比火灾简单。关于洪水的信息来自美国多个机构，如联邦紧急事务管理局 (FEMA)、国家气象局、美国地质调查局以及国家海洋和大气管理局。Mills 认为，问题在于来自不同来源的信息过于庞杂，人们很难将所有信息整合起来，从而清晰地了解周边地区是否存在迫在眉睫的威胁。他希望通过 Watch Duty 将这些信息提炼成更直观的预警概况。
“You’re told to do something, but it’s too late,” Mills says. “It’s too little, it doesn’t work. With Watch Duty, you can start to piece together a bunch of information all on one screen to make an informed decision.”
“当你被告知要采取行动时，往往已经太晚了，”Mills 说，“信息太少或根本不起作用。有了 Watch Duty，你可以在一个屏幕上整合各种信息，从而做出明智的决策。”
Watch Duty won’t be able to communicate more granular details, like when every tree goes down across the flood zone. Mills says flooding on Watch Duty will be presented more simply, with a focus on where the floodplain is and what the water levels are at. Flood forecasts depend on buoys that detect water height. Watch Duty now lets users find the nearest buoy and set a push notification alert for when it hits a high enough level that flooding could become a threat.
Watch Duty 无法传达过于细致的细节，例如洪水区域内每一棵树倒下的具体时间。Mills 表示，Watch Duty 上的洪水信息将以更简洁的方式呈现，重点关注洪泛区的位置和水位情况。洪水预报依赖于检测水位的浮标。现在，Watch Duty 允许用户查找最近的浮标，并设置推送通知，以便在水位达到可能构成威胁的高度时及时收到警报。
Watch Duty has reported some floods before, but those were one-off events. Getting floods fully integrated into the service has taken some time. Mills says having more disasters in Watch Duty was always the plan, but ensuring the feature works has been a challenge—especially during busy fire seasons.
Watch Duty 之前也曾报道过一些洪水，但那都是一次性事件。将洪水灾害完全整合到服务中花费了一些时间。Mills 表示，将更多灾害类型纳入 Watch Duty 一直是他们的计划，但确保该功能稳定运行一直是个挑战，尤其是在繁忙的火灾季节。
“We wanted to start working on it in January of 2025, but you know what happened then,” Mills says. “This was always something we were going to do.”
“我们本想在 2025 年 1 月开始着手处理，但你知道当时发生了什么（指火灾频发），”Mills 说，“这始终是我们计划要做的事情。”
Since the LA fires, Mills says Watch Duty has established itself as a resource for people in disaster-prone areas. That has also led to more investments and partnerships with the nonprofit. Mills says Watch Duty doubled its staff and leadership headcount. In April, Watch Duty partnered with Google.org to help build AI-powered tools that automatically transcribe responder radio traffic during wildfires.
Mills 表示，自洛杉矶火灾以来，Watch Duty 已成为灾害多发地区民众的重要资源。这也为该非营利组织带来了更多的投资和合作伙伴。Mills 称，Watch Duty 的员工和领导团队规模翻了一番。今年 4 月，Watch Duty 与 Google.org 达成合作，共同开发人工智能工具，用于在野火期间自动转录应急响应人员的无线电通讯内容。
Watch Duty wants to expand to cover all natural disasters. Floods is the first step in that expansion, but eventually he thinks the service will be able to support much more. He does clarify that Watch Duty will only focus on natural disasters, not anything related to crime that would require monitoring police radio signals.
Watch Duty 希望扩展到覆盖所有自然灾害。洪水是这一扩展计划的第一步，但他认为最终该服务将能够支持更多灾害类型。他明确表示，Watch Duty 将仅专注于自然灾害，不会涉及任何需要监测警方无线电信号的犯罪相关内容。
“I don’t care if it’s lava, wind, fire coming after you, that’s where we want to be,” Mills says.
“我不在乎是熔岩、大风还是火灾向你袭来，这就是我们想要守护的地方，”Mills 说道。