AI detecting dangers where millions of people splash

Résumé détaillé

An app is in the works to help millions of people identify dangerous water conditions that repeatedly lead to panic and death when enjoying the beach.

The vast majority of Australians do not know how to spot the biggest killer at the beach.

Rip currents kill roughly 26 people every year along Australia's coastline and surf lifeguards rescue thousands more from dangerous waters dragging people out to sea.

Rip-Eye is an app allowing beachgoers to take a picture of the surf, before an AI-algorithm detects what rip currents are present.

"From the statistics, about one in five average beachgoers can actually spot a rip," Mitchell Harley, who has led the University of NSW (UNSW) project, told AAP.

"The app can't replace a lifeguard, but lifeguards can't be on every beach in Australia ... we have 11,000 beaches."

UNSW's Water Research Laboratory has cameras along Australia's coastline that have been photographing the ocean for the past 20 years.

People worldwide have taken part in Dr Harley's citizen science project and submitted a further 200,000 photos from across the planet to the lab.

For years, his team have identified rips present in the photographs and carefully drawn lines onto them, a process he described as painstaking.

Altered photos were then fed into an algorithm machine and taught to detect rip current patterns.

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