AI Against Human Rage

Artificial intelligence (AI) shows promise in nearly all industries. The same goes for disaster preparedness and relief.

Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology senior science adviser on resilience David Alexander recognizes AI’s capability in supporting communities with more comprehensive risk assessments and adaptive planning support.

“AI allows us to pull in a lot of different information sources, iterate through those sources, come up with additional ways to assess the risk and then marry or match those risks to potential interventions at scale,” Alexander said.

Findings can then be presented to communities and stakeholders alike, he explained.

There are additional and more nuanced areas to the technology, Alexander said, such as exploiting AI for onboard analytic processing for different types of sensing technologies.

“The sensor is now working more autonomously and doesn’t require human intervention,” he added. “And this becomes important when you’re wanting to proliferate or densify the number of sensors, you would like those sensors to be reliable.”

The sensors, outside of capturing information signals, would need to be able to process signals to understand whether a change must be made.

Alexander’s statements on the benefits of sensor usage for disaster preparedness and response were echoed by Mauricio Saldivar, meteorologist and smart city expert.

With the use of sensors, smart cities are a new point of view for urban sustainability and development.

“A smart city is resiliency,” Saldivar said, speaking on their potential to create climate-smart water management, climate-smart agriculture and to manage natural resources in a safe way. “The tools for making a city smart are the same for making a city resilient to disaster or climate resilience.”

A warming planet will create a world with increased chances of food and water scarcity, consequently changing human emotions, Saldivar explained.

Several scientific reports have examined the effect temperature changes have on human emotion. “In a warmer world, violence against women will be increased,” Saldivar explained, stressing the relationship between temperature and rage.