Microsoft Disaster Management: On Tuesday, the department of energy and Microsoft Corp. Announced their collaboration for the development of artificial intelligence tools to help first responders in disasters such as wildfire, natural floods, or any other natural event.
Microsoft and department of energy will co-chair the group of “first five consortium”. This group will focus on developing technologies that will help in assessing damage, handle rescue and search and anticipating wildfires as well as managing fire lines.
Microsoft Disaster Management – “Artificial intelligence enables us to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges, and in this case, improve disaster resilience for populations around the world, As showed by this consortium we have joined with the DOE and DoD, private and public sectors must work together to provide first responders with technology that has the potential to save lives.” Said Toni Townes-Whitley, President of US Regulated Industries, Microsoft.
Department of energy will help contribute to developing and testing efforts where Microsoft will handle the technological resources as well as AI model training and inference.
“There are so many technologies where we can solve some of the toughest problems, in a moment where we’re having an explosion of wildfires and floods and some major natural disasters and we think we can bring AI to bear here and help save lives,” said Cheryl Ingstad, director of the Energy Department’s Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office.
The first five Consortium will be ready with a prototype this fall. This prototype is built in DOE’s Pacific Northwest laboratory, but the model was built by department pf defense’s joint Artificial intelligence center (JAIC). Microsoft will test their AI models with the help of data stored in the Azure cloud.
This initiative is taken with keeping in mind the various climate changes. These climate changes cause various calamities like wildfire in Summers in California and midwestern states of the US, Iowa’ massive wind storm and the flood which affected almost 14 million people in midwestern and southern states.
