AI key to revamping disaster management

Thailand urged to embrace tech tools

- SUCHIT LEESA-NGUANSUK

Dual-use infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered risk analysis, and community empowerment are the key components needed to drive disaster resilience in an era of mounting climate uncertainty.

"Disaster management is not only for disaster managers," Miho Mazereeuw, director of the MIT Climate Mission and Urban Risk Lab, told a recent disaster management conference hosted by the US Embassy in Bangkok, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ASEAN Initiative and the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham).

Ms Mazereeuw said a new paradigm shift in disaster management requires a proactive approach, moving beyond mere response to focus on adaptation, mitigation, preparedness, response, and long-term recovery.

The push for resilience can start in urban design, community empowerment and technological innovation, she said.

Ms Mazereeuw said the focus on the adaptation can start with the concept of "dual-use design", where everyday infrastructure is ingeniously crafted to serve critical emergency functions.

For example, in Japan, sports stadiums are designed with emergency supplies, while supermarkets and schools are built to also be evacuation centres.

She said data analysis provides actionable insights such as in the US city of Boston, where property developers are required to use digital modelling as part of a climate resiliency checklist before a project construction.

This digital modelling helps ensure building designs account for potential impacts like storm surges, directly connecting digital analysis to physical building design.

In Thailand, MIT works with local communities, using its Copin digital toolkit to facilitate collaborative community mapping for climate action.