The future of disaster planning: How AI & ML models could protect communities from natural disasters

tech.hindustantimes.com:

While artificial intelligence (AI) is great fun to generate text and produce art, there are some serious issues that AI and machine learning (ML) can solve. With natural disasters becoming increasingly devastating and unpredictable, life is getting more uncertain in some areas of the world. Disaster management is a sector where the integration of AI and ML models can revolutionize the way we prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the effects of catastrophic events, while we use the new tools to protect communities and save lives.

In recent years, the changing landscape of natural disasters has been hard to keep up with. According to the WMO's 2020 State of Climate Services report, globally, one in three people is not covered sufficiently by an early warning system. Climate change, urbanization, and population growth have amplified the vulnerability of communities, rendering traditional disaster planning methodologies insufficient in many cases.

While the concerns for climate change continue to baffle, the world's organizations and institutions are taking notice and reaching out to technology to assist, where AI and ML have emerged as powerful allies.

“We are all exposed to natural hazards, and this will worsen in the future,” Jürg Luterbacher, Director of Science and Innovation of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said at a recent AI for Good online seminar. “We need to act upon them accordingly.”

WMO, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), are exploring the potential of AI to strengthen disaster mitigation and formed an expert Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management to support global efforts to integrate AI in disaster-management systems.

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