Webinar Series - Artificial Intelligence in Disaster Management – Scope and Limitations
The role of AI in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is transformative, offering advanced tools for risk analysis, event prediction, and emergency response. AI and machine learning can rapidly process data to improve understanding of disaster patterns, validate historical databases, and counteract misinformation—such as false alerts or fake news—by identifying and correcting them in real time.
However, the deployment of AI in DRR faces challenges, including system failures, cyberattacks, equity of access, and biases in AI models, which require careful attention, robust infrastructure, and continuous monitoring. Ethical considerations, such as ensuring fairness and avoiding the perpetuation of existing biases, are also crucial.
For AI to be most effective, it must be developed and implemented in a demand-driven manner, tailored to local contexts and the specific needs of communities, decision-makers, and emergency responders. Early stakeholder engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration are key to making AI-driven DRR solutions more impactful and widely adopted.
The Artificial Intelligence in Disaster Management – Scope and Limitations webinar series includes four sessions with distinguished experts in the field of AI for disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation. The series aims to encourage focused reflection on the current and plausible future role of AI technology across all disaster management functions. This covers preparedness and early warning, through vulnerability and exposure mapping, hazard assessment, humanitarian and emergency response actions, recovery and long-term resilience.
The four themes are as follows:
- AI in DRR/DRM: Current Capabilities, Applications, and Future Potential – 22 October 2026
- Trust, Explainability, and Responsible AI in DRR Decision Making - 13 November 2026 (TBC)
- Governance, Data Bias, Disinformation, and Equity - 19 January 2027 (TBC)
- From Passive AI Tools to AI agents and Digital Twins - 16 February 2027 (TBC)
The opening theme will provide a comprehensive overview of how AI is currently used across disaster management topics from general risk assessment and vulnerability mapping to early warning, emergency response, recovery, and long-term resilience. It would examine the gap between current operational use and the broader potential of AI technologies, highlighting examples from research and practice.
The webinar series are organized by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) European Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (E-STAG) in partnership with the special assistance of Dr Saman Ghaffarian, Associate Professor in Humanitarian AI and Geoinformatics at UCL and Dr Ting Sun, Associate Professor, Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction at UCL.
Who is the webinar for: The webinar series will include both policy discussions and guidelines, as well as more in-depth technical content, which may require a certain level of technical savviness. The webinars are intended for policy makers, DRR and climate action specialists and experts, the scientific community and other interested parties.
Theme 1: AI in DRR/DRM: Current Capabilities, Applications, and Future Potential
Chair: Prof. Mark Pelling, Professor of Risk and Disaster Reduction Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction (RDR) at UCL and E-STAG member
Moderator: Dr Saman Ghaffarian, Associate Professor in Humanitarian AI and Geoinformatics at UCL
Speakers: TBC
Format: Panel discussions + Q&A
To participate, please register via the following Zoom link: Register in Zoom