Complete Story
 

11/16/2018

Disaster Relief Is Dangerously Broken

Cities are looking to AI to streamline their disaster-response efforts

In 2014, Stanford student structural engineer Ahmad Wani was visiting family in his native Kashmir when a catastrophic flood struck. The rising waters stranded him and his family for seven days without food or water, during which they watched their neighbor’s home collapse, killing everyone inside.

After this horrifying experience, Wani was struck by just how disorganized the emergency response was. “There is no science behind how people should be rescued,” he says. “Disaster response is really random.”

Today, Wani’s startup One Concern is launching a machine learning platform that provides cities with specialized maps to help emergency crews decide where to focus their efforts in a flood. The maps update in real-time based on data about where water is flowing to estimate where people need help the most. It’s the latest in a wave of AI-powered tools aimed at helping cities prepare for an era of severe, and increasingly frequent, disasters.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.

Printer-Friendly Version