Former FEMA Admin.: AI Can Marry Urban Planning and Disaster Response
Estimates were 10,000 dead or missing and
Tech companies that study data and make government software have taken notice, and a handful of platforms already offer ways to help governments prepare for natural disasters -- Hazus is the hazard modeling tool already used by the
But the company that has the attention of former FEMA administrator
Talking to Government Technology last week about the future of disaster response, Fugate, as One Concern's chief emergency management officer, said the most pressing need is for governments to transition from being reactive to proactive. He said land use and building codes will be instrumental in mitigating future risk, but until recently, no one had both the data and computing power to predict impacts of natural disasters in enough detail to recommend precautions.
"How and where we build our communities has the single biggest outcome for success in disaster, not response. And we lacked the tools to accurately display these risks in a way that we can show how bad it could be, but also what we could do differently to change that outcome," he said. "Forecasting 36 inches of rain and issuing a flood warning is (not enough). How many of my substations are going underwater and I'm going to lose power because of that? That's what we can answer."
Founded in 2015 by
"This gives us the ability to go, 'What could happen, and how does our plan respond to that?' I'd much rather find out what's not working than to wait for the real event," Fugate said. "If we wait until the event, I think we missed the opportunity to change the outcome."
Described by spokesman
Only recently, with the advent of neural networks and cloud computing, has it been possible to analyze that volume of data in a single simulation. Fugate said the results are faster and more accurate than ever, creating a higher-resolution model of disaster outcomes than any he's seen.
"We look at over 160 variables per structure. We're down to blocks ... In some cases we're not even sure how it's coming up with the answer anymore, because the neural networks are so deep," he said. "If I know which block got heavy impacts, I also know who lives there or what kind of structures or businesses are there, and one of the tools we've been building for emergency managers ... shows not just a red area, but how much your population over 65 have been impacted."
Besides data and bandwidth, Fugate said, one of the obstacles to the success of similar tools in the past has been the emergency management market itself. He said the only way these products become viable is if they're sold not as a response tool for responders but a resilience tool for governments. That means positioning One Concern's platform as a tool for saving lives, costs and infrastructure, and even for urban planning.
"From my time at FEMA, if we understand that in the really big disasters, government is going to fail by itself -- you have to work as a team -- then how do we provide tools in our platform that helps a community build resilience that just doesn't stop with government?" he said. "We're looking at how does the private sector engage in this? How do you get this down to individuals?"
A spokesman said the company has 10 clients, a majority of which are local governments in west coast cities such as
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