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As Hurricane Season Nears, Communities Are Reassessing How They Prepare for Floods

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From emergency officials to utility providers and retailers, organizations are increasingly seeking real-time visibility into predicted flood impacts as storms become faster, more disruptive, and harder to predict.

DENVER, May 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As hurricane season approaches, organizations across the United States are facing a growing challenge: understanding how flooding will impact operations, infrastructure, transportation networks, and communities in real time.

Organizations seek real-time visibility into flood impacts as storms become more disruptive and harder to predict.

Despite decades of investment in floodplain mapping, weather forecasting, and disaster planning, many agencies and businesses still struggle to answer critical operational questions before and during major storm events:

Which communities need to be evacuated? Which roads are becoming impassable? Which facilities are at risk? Which communities may lose access to critical services? Where should crews and resources be deployed first?

The challenge has become increasingly urgent as extreme rainfall events grow more intense, more localized, and more difficult to predict.

In July 2025, catastrophic flooding across Central Texas escalated rapidly overnight, overwhelming roads and low-lying areas across multiple counties. Similar disasters in recent years across the eastern United States have exposed how quickly flood conditions can outpace traditional planning tools and static flood maps.

In response, a growing number of emergency management agencies, utilities, transportation departments, and major retailers are beginning to adopt impact-based flood forecasting and real-time flood impact monitoring tools designed to provide earlier visibility and support operational emergency preparedness and response workflows as storms unfold.

“These events are evolving faster than many traditional systems were designed for,” said Juliette Murphy, FloodMapp CEO and co-founder. “Flood hazard maps are essential for understanding long-term risk, but organizations also need operational visibility during an event. That’s where many preparedness and business continuity gaps still exist. Timely, impact-based forecasting and situational awareness help agencies and businesses understand what is happening on the ground, who and what may be affected, and where conditions are likely to worsen—enabling faster, more coordinated response decisions when time matters most.”

FloodMapp, and Australian-founded flood forecasting company with operations in the United States, has supported flood preparedness and response initiatives for governments and commercial organizations in both the U.S. and Australia.

During the 2025 Texas floods, FloodMapp’s live flood monitoring tools were deployed mid-crisis to support statewide response efforts, helping agencies visualize changing flood conditions and understand the impacts to roads, buildings, and communities.

In Virginia’s Blue Ridge region, FloodMapp is currently supporting a regional flood resilience initiative—made possible by RISE Resilience Innovations, with funding from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development—to improve flood preparedness and early warning capabilities for mountain communities vulnerable to fast-rising flash floods.

Commercial organizations are also increasingly incorporating flood intelligence into continuity planning and operational decision-making. Major retailers, utilities, and logistics operators are placing greater emphasis on understanding site-level flood impacts in advance to help protect employees and inventory, maintain access to facilities, reduce downtime, and support community operations during severe weather.

In Queensland, Australia, and Norfolk, Virginia, flood intelligence is being integrated into navigation platforms such as Waze and Google Maps to help warn drivers about flooded roads and dangerous travel conditions, redirecting them to safer routes.

According to the U.S. National Weather Service, flooding remains one of the leading causes of weather-related fatalities in the United States, with many deaths occurring in vehicles when drivers attempt to cross flooded roads.

Risk communication researchers such as Dr. Jeannette Sutton, owner and founder at The Warn Room, have emphasized the importance of timely, location-specific, and actionable warnings during disasters—particularly during rapidly evolving events where delays or unclear messaging can put lives at risk.

As another hurricane season begins, the ability to see flood impacts in real time is quickly becoming essential to public safety, business continuity, and emergency response.

About FloodMapp

FloodMapp provides operational, impact-based flood forecasting and real-time impact intelligence to support preparation, response, and recovery. Updated hourly and delivered into existing GIS and operations systems, FloodMapp maps flood extent, depth, and impacts to the built environment.

To request a short demonstration, contact sales@floodmapp.com. FloodMapp is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, with a U.S. hub in Denver, Colorado. Learn more at www.floodmapp.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/as-hurricane-season-nears-communities-are-reassessing-how-they-prepare-for-floods-302772741.html

SOURCE FloodMapp

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NEC Vietnam Appoints New General Director to Advance Digital Innovation

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May 19, 2026

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HANOI, Vietnam, May 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NEC Vietnam announced the appointment of Yasushi Numakura as its new General Director, effective April 1, 2026. The appointment reflects NEC’s continued commitment to expanding trusted technology partnerships and supporting Vietnam’s growing digital ambitions.

Numakura-san joined NEC Group in 1990 and brings over three decades of experience across systems engineering, mobile technology development, and global business leadership. In 2014, he was appointed Head of NEC Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh branch, where he drove business portfolio transformation and strengthened regional partnerships. He subsequently held leadership roles at NEC Solution Innovators and most recently led resource management reform initiatives as part of delivery model transformation efforts.

In his new role, he will lead NEC Vietnam’s business operations and strategic direction, with a focus on strengthening software development capabilities and accelerating digital transformation initiatives across key sectors, serving both the Japanese and APAC markets.

“I am excited to join NEC Vietnam and build on the strong momentum established by the local team over the years. Together with our customers and partners, we look forward to creating what’s ahead through trusted technologies and meaningful solutions that create lasting value for businesses, communities, and society. In line with NEC’s 2030 mid-term direction, we will also advance our capabilities as an AI-native organization with security at the core, ensuring that our innovations are both impactful and resilient,” shares Numakura-san.

Under his leadership, NEC Vietnam will continue providing technologies and solutions spanning software development, biometrics, and public safety.

***

About NEC Vietnam

NEC established its liaison office in Vietnam in the early 1990s under the global business framework of NEC Corporation. It was re-organized as NEC Vietnam Co., Ltd. in 2006, with a newfound commitment to grow the business and contribute towards the people and society of Vietnam.

In a rapidly changing business environment, NEC Vietnam has evolved into a comprehensive solutions provider, leveraging their core competence in delivering Solutions for Society, focused on building social infrastructure that benefits citizens and communities.

Visit https://vn.nec.com to learn more.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/nec-vietnam-appoints-new-general-director-to-advance-digital-innovation-302774786.html

SOURCE NEC Vietnam

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South Asia’s First-ever Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Demonstration, Led by ISGF in Collaboration with its Technology and Utility Partners

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11 hours ago

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May 19, 2026

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NEW DELHI, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — South Asia’s first ever groundbreaking Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Technology Demonstration in India implemented by India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) marks a major advancement in smart Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and grid stability, paving the way for a future of bidirectional energy flows between EVs and the power grid. ISGF, with its utility partners and technical support from the University of Delaware (UDEL), USA, executed this first-of-its-kind Alternating Current (AC) V2G pilot demonstration in South Asia. The demonstration project was implemented at BSES Rajdhani Power Limited, BSES Yamuna Power Limited, TATA Power Delhi Distribution Limited, as well as at the Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT), Kerala. This pilot demonstration has tested a variety of V2G use cases and found it highly relevant for distributed renewable energy integration and grid stability.

As part of the project, four Tata Nexon EVs were retrofitted with on-board bidirectional power modules and connected to the grid through bidirectional AC chargers. The equipment cost of AC V2G is significantly lower than DC V2G. ISGF is working with local technology companies and EV OEMs to build a V2G ecosystem in the country.

For more information, please write to contactus@indiasmartgrid.org

About India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF)

ISGF is a public private partnership initiative of the Govt. of India, with the mandate of accelerating smart grid deployments across the country. With 170+ members comprising of ministries, utilities, technology providers, academia and research, ISGF has evolved as a Think-Tank of global repute on Smart Energy and Smart Cities. The mandate of ISGF is to accelerate energy transition through clean energy, electric grid modernization and electric mobility; work with national and international agencies in standards development and help utilities, regulators and the Industry in technology selection, training and capacity building.

Website: https://indiasmartgrid.org/ 

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Tencent Cloud and Stream Partner to Accelerate the Development of Real-Time Multimodal AI Agents

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May 19, 2026

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HONG KONG, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of leading global technology company, Tencent, today announced a strategic collaboration with Stream, the company behind the open-source AI agent framework Vision Agents, to accelerate the development of real-time, multimodal AI agents.

Through this collaboration, Tencent Real-Time Communication (Tencent RTC) becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents, giving developers worldwide a low-latency path to build and deploy interactive AI applications across global markets, including regions where network complexity and real-time performance are critical.

Unlocking Lower-Latency Transport for Enhanced Experiences Across China and Asia

Vision Agents is an open-source, edge-agnostic Python framework from Stream that helps developers quickly build low-latency vision AI applications. Rather than retrofitting video onto a voice-centric stack, Vision Agents was designed as a video-first solution — running models such as YOLO, Roboflow, OpenAI Realtime, and Google Gemini on every frame, with sub-500ms end-to-end latency and over 25 out-of-the-box integrations across LLM, STT, TTS, vision, RAG, telephony, and avatar providers.

Through this partnership, Tencent RTC becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents. Developers can use Tencent RTC to replace the default communication layer in Vision Agents and instantly leverage Tencent Cloud’s enterprise-grade backbone — more than 3,200 global nodes, sub-300ms worldwide latency, AI-driven noise suppression, and weak-network resilience — while keeping every existing LLM, STT, TTS, vision, and avatar plugin unchanged.

The integration supports both audio and video, making it suitable for voice agents, video agents, and multimodal scenarios — powering use cases such as gaming assistants, virtual avatars, sports coaching, and robotics. AI agents can join TRTC rooms and interact with participants in real-time through high-quality audio and video streams.

Tencent RTC operates a globally distributed real-time network with particularly strong performance across some markets in Asia where many global real-time stacks face connectivity and latency challenges. By integrating Tencent RTC, Vision Agents gives developers worldwide a reliable transport option for delivering low-latency, multimodal AI experiences to users in Asia. Developers can improve real-time communication performance by simply swapping the interface.

Wison Xie, Head of Product at Tencent RTC, said: “Vision Agents represents exactly where conversational AI is heading, beyond voice-only, into agents that can truly see, hear, and act in real time. By bringing Tencent RTC’s global real-time backbone to the Vision Agents framework, we are giving developers worldwide a turnkey path to ship multimodal agents that perform reliably from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. This collaboration reinforces our commitment to powering the next generation of real-time AI experiences for enterprises and developers across global market.”

Neevash Ramdial, Director of Marketing and Vision Agents Lead, said, “Our goal with Vision Agents is to make real-time AI development faster, more flexible, and open, giving developers the freedom to choose the models, infrastructure, and plugins that work best for their applications. Developers building global conversational AI applications also need reliable real-time performance in every market, and Tencent RTC brings high-quality, low-latency connectivity across Asia to the Vision Agents ecosystem. We’re excited to work with Tencent RTC to help developers scale multimodal AI experiences worldwide while having the freedom to use whichever plugin or model best fits their app.”

About Tencent Cloud:
Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Tencent RTC: 
Tencent RTC provides real-time communication solutions, including audio/video calling, live streaming, and in-game voice. With enterprise-grade security, AI-powered enhancements, and a global network of over 3,200 nodes, Tencent RTC powers mission-critical communication for customers worldwide.

About Vision Agents: 
Vision Agents is Stream’s open-source framework that helps developers quickly build real-time video AI applications. It works out of the box with most major LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, avatar, and infrastructure providers, so teams can go from idea to production in just a few lines of code, building everything from real-time sports coaches to rich, context-aware avatars.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/tencent-cloud-and-stream-partner-to-accelerate-the-development-of-real-time-multimodal-ai-agents-302774565.html

SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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