AI, Autonomous Vehicles, and Emergency Management

THE CHALLENGE

AI is reshaping emergency management: Emergency managers increasingly rely on AI tools for risk assessment, response, and recovery. AI companies experience incidents that demand emergency management capabilities. And AI-driven systems, from autonomous vehicles to critical infrastructure, are generating new categories of risk that existing frameworks were not designed to handle. AI and emergency management policy and practice have not kept pace with these developments.

THE APPROACH

- Analysis of autonomous vehicle incident management exercise programs in partnership with Waymo

- Review of autonomous vehicle emergency response policy, training exercises, and simulation practices

- Assessment of AI tools used in emergency management operations

- Interviews with city officials on technology-related public-private partnerships

- Collaboration with emergency managers on incident management for significant cyber incidents

- Comparison of cyber incident response to conventional emergency response

THE OUTCOME

Practical tools, strategies, and policy guidance for building community and systems resilience in fragile, conflict, and violence-affected settings spanning early warning, food security, urban risk, and disaster governance.

Further reading

On Being Prepared: Automated Vehicle Incident Management Exercise Practices. Waymo (forthcoming)

Smart cities as large technological systems: Overcoming organizational challenges in smart cities through collective action Sustainable Cities and Society

Why AI must include community voices Preventionweb

The Role of AI in Meeting a Great Emergency Management Challenge Domestic Preparedness

Tech Alone Isn't Enough to Create a Smart City Route Fifty

Robots in the Time of Crisis: How Autonomous Vehicles Could Help and/or Hinder Disaster Response. Springer (forthcoming)

Planning for Significant Cyber Incidents: An Introduction for Decisionmakers RAND Corporation

Preparing for a cyber-attack starts at the local level International Association of Emergency Managers