Article by Ben Ellencweig, Mihir Mysore, Jon Spaner: “…Generative AI presents transformative potential, especially in disaster preparedness and response, and recovery. As billion-dollar disasters become more frequent – “billion-dollar disasters” typically costing the U.S. roughly $120 billion each – and “polycrises”, or multiple crises at once proliferate (e.g. hurricanes combined with cyber disruptions), the significant impact that Generative AI can have, especially with proper leadership focus, is a focal point of interest.
Generative AI’s speed is crucial in emergencies, as it enhances information access, decision-making capabilities, and early warning systems. Beyond organizational benefits for those who adopt Generative AI, its applications include real-time data analysis, scenario simulations, sentiment analysis, and simplifying complex information access. Generative AI’s versatility offers a wide variety of promising applications in disaster relief, and opens up facing real time analyses with tangible applications in the real world.
Early warning systems and sentiment analysis: Generative AI excels in early warning systems and sentiment analysis, by scanning accurate real-time data and response clusters. By enabling connections between disparate systems, Generative AI holds the potential to provide more accurate early warnings. Integrated with traditional and social media, Generative AI can also offer precise sentiment analysis, empowering leaders to understand public sentiment, detect bad actors, identify misinformation, and tailor communications for accurate information dissemination.
Scenario simulations: Generative AI holds the potential to enhance catastrophe modeling for better crisis assessment and resource allocation. It creates simulations for emergency planners, improving modeling for various disasters (e.g., hurricanes, floods, wildfires) using historical data such as location, community impact, and financial consequence. Often, simulators perform work “so large that it exceeds human capacity (for example, finding flooded or unusable roads across a large area after a hurricane).” …(More)”