Frequent floods are expected in Zhejiang in July and August due to heavy rainfall.

A safety code, implemented since May 2020, has been playing an important role in safeguarding citizens’ lives.

Baisha village is located at the north end of Lin’an district in Hangzhou. Situated in a valley, the village’s most houses are built against the mountain, alongside brooks. Villagers are threatened by floods when the season comes.

Last May, villagers in Baisha village became the first batch of users to “Zhejiang Safety Code”. After signing up via their smart phones, every household is given a unique QR code. They can get real-time information of rainfall by scanning the codes and staff at backstage of the system will also be informed with locations of each household.

“If a flood comes, rescue team will know exactly where everyone is. It saves time to search for people house by house. During flood season, time is life,” said an official with Zhejiang Provincial Department of Emergency Management.

When typhoon Hagupit hit the province in last August, Zhejiang transferred 430,000 people to safety areas with the help of “Zhejiang Safety Code”. By now, Zhejiang has gathered information of 3 million people who live in key areas.

“Zhejiang Safety Code” is an illustration of how Zhejiang has been implementing digitization in flood-control and disaster-relief.

The system behind the “Zhejiang Safety Code” gathers information of key areas in Zhejiang province that have potential geographic threats. The information include accurate location and historic records in recent 10 years. A five-color risk evaluation system is created on this basis.

In last July, Zhejiang raised its flooding emergency response to the top level along the Qiantang River, and the Xin'an River Reservoir, the largest flood-control project in eastern China, opened all the nine spillways to release floodwater.

The system calculates out the best solution of distributing supplies and scheduled 11,000 people for disaster-relief. Distribution of more than 34,000 pieces of supplies was finished within three hours.

The platform has accessed to more than 200 million data from 16 government departments so far, covering all aspects of disaster-relief.

“Accurate forecast of natural disasters is just the first step of this platform. The key mission of it is to realize a unified, scientific and efficient mechanism that enables different departments to cooperate together,” said Zhang Lei, and official with Zhejiang Provincial Department of Emergency Management.

Data showed that economic damage brought by natural disasters in 2020 dropped by 27.3 percent from 2015 and death dropped by 68.5 percent.

This year, the platform will also add more disaster modes including drought, forest fire and earthquake to elevate its function in forecast.