River Monitor: an independent early view of Mekong dams and floods

The problem

Nearly 65 million people live in the Lower Mekong Basin, and an estimated 80% depend on the river for their livelihoods (Mekong River Commission). Upstream dams change flows with little public warning, and flood and drought information reaches towns late, in the wrong language, or not at all.

What River Monitor does

• Tracks reservoir water area at Lancang mainstream and Lao dams from Sentinel-1 radar, every month since 2017.
• Ranks today's river levels against the same time of year at gauges and towns from China to the delta.
• Gives towns plain-language status and opt-in alerts in five languages: English, Thai, Lao, Khmer and Vietnamese (machine-translated, pending native review).
• Publishes its accuracy honestly: features that fail testing stay labelled beta.

Live numbers

• 37 river points tracked
• 10 Mekong dams watched by satellite (China and Laos)
• – daily records archived

Team

Luke Fairweather, solo founder, Himil Pty Ltd (trading as AI Cubed), Australia. Contact: [email protected].