AI to the rescue

The concept of an AI chat bot delivering postcode-specific disaster information developed by psychology postgraduate students at James Cook University won the 2024 Disaster Challenge.

Natural Hazards Research Australia’s national challenge for early career researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students, the Disaster Challenge took place on 4 October hosted by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services Bushire Centre of Excellence in Mandurah, Western Australia.

Building trust and resilience: Improving community disaster response through personalised messages, made up of Alison Sheaves, Craig Ridep-Morris and Madison Green, used human behavioural theory to develop the idea of an accessible personalised AI chat bot providing current, localised emergency information that is scalable to various locations and types of disasters.

Winning team member Madison Green believes the team’s lived experience of disasters, including Tropical Cyclones Yasi in 2011 and Kirrily in 2024 and the Townsville floods in 2019, gave them first-hand insight into how to tackle this year’s wicked problem.

“Using our own lived experience of natural hazards in Townsville, we experienced a lack of personalised messaging around the risks and implications associated with the natural hazard or the disaster, which left us feeling uncertain, afraid and unsure about how best to help ourselves, friends and families,” Madison said.

“This is what prompted us to focus on personalising messages as a way of building resilience within communities before and during natural hazards, as well as grow trust in the agencies and organisations preparing for and responding to disasters.”

Teammate Alison Sheaves highlighted the key aspect of personally tailored information during disasters.

“Once we began looking at the disaster information resources already available, including local councils’ disaster dashboards in Queensland, we felt that they weren’t particularly personally relevant,” Alison said.

“An AI chat bot providing tailored, relevant messaging around a disaster would fill this gap, covering preparing for the disaster, up-to-date information, your risk and how to mitigate it.”

Team member Craig Ridep-Morris looks forward to further exploring the team’s concept with the support of Natural Hazards Research Australia.

“The people we’ve met during the Disaster Challenge means we’re optimistic of collaborating with people from a wide range of organisations and industries to develop a prototype AI chat bot providing disaster information to really help people understand their risks and prepare and respond to disasters,” Craig said.

Natural Hazards Research Australia CEO Andrew Gissing believes tapping into non-traditional areas of disaster management research is crucial to building resilience and trust within and between communities and emergency service organisations.

“The Disaster Challenge, and Craig, Alison and Madison through their winning concept, demonstrate the breadth and depth of the research ideas and disciplines needed to ensure Australia is collectively able to meet the increasing impacts of more frequent and severe natural hazards,” Andrew said.

“Harnessing technological advancements such as AI to clearly communicate personalised disaster information could provide people in harm’s way with a level of certainty during what is a highly uncertain time, building trust and enhancing resilience,” Andrew said.

Other finalist teams representing the University of Western Australia, Murdoch University, La Trobe University, University of Queensland and Queensland Fire Department pitched heatwave community engagement and home insurance incentive solutions.

Visit disasterchallenge.com.au to watch the finalist teams’ pitches and for further information about the Disaster Challenge.