As number and intensity of natural disasters rise, ITU has launched a new Focus Group in collaboration with WMO and UNEP to study how to manage natural disasters with the help of artificial intelligence
The pandemic apart, year 2020 was just bad news in many, many ways – including the number of natural disasters it witnessed. From Australia to America, wildfires to floods and hurricanes, the sheer number of deaths and dollars lost in damages due to extreme weather events in the past year was simply mind-numbing. In the US alone, there were 22 extreme climate-related disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each, according to NOAA. While the total cost of these 285 events exceeds $1.875 trillion, the year set a new annual record of 22 events — shattering the previous annual record of 16 events that occurred in 2011 and 2017.
And as per a new study by CoreLogic, a leading property data, analytics and services provider , roughly 35 million homes, or nearly one-third of America’s housing stock, are at “high risk” of a natural disaster.
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The new year doesn’t seem to get any better, with news of wildfires and floods pouring from Australia, glacier burst in India, storms in Chile, earthquake in Japan and major snow events in North America. And this is just the beginning. With experts already warning that rising temperatures would lead to increased extreme weather events – both in numbers and intensity — there is an urgent need to leverage latest technologies to predict, preempt and save as many lives as possible.
New UN initiative
In this regard, the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) initiative to launch a new Focus Group to contend with the increasing prevalence and severity of natural disasters with the help of artificial intelligence is a major welcome step. As part of this effort, ITU, which is the UN’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies, is closely collaborating with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to distill emerging best practices to develop a roadmap for international action in AI for natural disaster management.
AI can not only advance data collection and handling, but also improve hazard modelling by extracting complex patterns from a growing volume of geospatial data, and support effective emergency communications. The Focus Group on ‘AI for Natural Disaster Management’ will analyze relevant use cases of AI to deliver technical reports and accompanying educational materials addressing these three key dimensions of natural disaster management. Its study of emergency communications will consider both technical as well as sociological and demographical aspects of these communications to ensure that they speak to all people at risk.
“With new data and new insight come new powers of prediction able to save countless numbers of lives,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “This new Focus Group is the latest ITU initiative to ensure that AI fulfils its extraordinary potential to accelerate the innovation required to address the greatest challenges facing humanity.”
What will the group do
The group’s first meeting is scheduled for March 15-17 2021, and participation is open to all interested parties.
“AI applications can provide efficient science-driven management strategies to support four phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery,” explains Muralee Thummarukudy, Operations Manager for Crisis Management at UNEP explained.
The Focus Group will pay particular attention to the needs of vulnerable and resource-constrained regions. It will make special effort to support the participation of the countries shown to be most acutely impacted by natural disasters, notably small island developing states and low-income countries.
“WMO looks forward to a fruitful collaboration with ITU and UNEP and the many prestigious universities and partners committed to this exciting initiative. AI is growing in importance to WMO activities and will help all countries to achieve major advances in disaster management that will leave no one behind,” said Jurg Luterbacher, Chief Scientist and Director of Science and Innovation at WMO.
As part of its Disaster Risk Reduction Programme, WMO already assists national in protecting lives, livelihoods and property from natural hazards. It is also strengthening meteorological support to humanitarian operations for disaster preparedness through the development of a WMO Coordination Mechanism and Global Multi-Hazard Alert System. “Complementary to the Focus Group, we aim to advance knowledge transfer, communication and education — all with a focus on regions where resources are limited,” Luterbacher added.
