On the way to Disaster Resilience: Role of AI in Disaster Mitigation

Abstract

On 2nd July 2021, a town in British Columbia was burnt down due to a fast-moving wildfire following an intense heatwave. One of the survivors said, “I ran towards the town, and the fire was pretty much following me, and in about 15 minutes, the whole town was gone.”. It is not the first time that disasters of this scale have occurred and wreaked havoc. Globally, on average natural disasters are the cause of more than 60,000 deaths every year. The Haiti earthquake in 2010 has killed more than 3,16,000 people and affected the lives of more than 3 million people. Being the poorest country in the Latin America and Caribbean region, Haiti did not have the capabilities to handle a disaster of this scale, and the country’s GDP dropped by 8%.