The National Guard will soon begin leveraging AI to help respond more quickly to disasters. New AI tools can assess aerial images of disasters, identify affected critical infrastructure, and generate labeled maps in just seconds. The AI technology comes from Bellwether, a group within a research lab called X that is part of Google's parent company Alphabet.
The National Guard coordinates all military disaster recovery operations in the United States and is responsible for damage assessment, search and rescue, and logistics. However, a case study of Company
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The National Guard is currently manually assessing the damage. That means people are looking through thousands of airplane images of disasters, searching databases to find photos of exact locations, and looking for changes in affected infrastructure. Organizations must wait until all items are analyzed before deploying the appropriate people and resources to tackle the problem.
“Right now, analysts have to spend time sorting through images to find images that cover the areas most affected by natural disasters,” said Col. Brian McGarry, who oversees the National Guard's operations, plans and training division. No,” he said. Case Study. “We then need to correlate those images with the surrounding infrastructure and label all relevant features. Only then can significant damage be highlighted and sent to first response teams. ”
Looking to modernize its disaster recovery approach, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), an organization within the Department of Defense, was looking for the right partners and tools. That search led me to Alphabet's Bellwether team.
Bellweather and DIU have teamed up to build a prototype that uses AI and machine learning to examine aerial footage of a disaster in just seconds.
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For example, if a hurricane hits Texas or floods hit Kentucky, Bellwether AI systems process photos of the disaster to pinpoint damage to critical infrastructure. The technology also relies on Google's geospatial information to reveal what an area looked like before a disaster.
“By using AI and ML to perform everyday tasks like geocorrection, identification, and labeling, we can quickly get critical information to the people who need it most,” said McGarry. says Mr. “It’s all about saving lives in our community.”
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DIU program manager Nirav Patel told The Washington Post that the National Guard plans to deploy the new AI tools in time for the summer wildfire season. It's set sometime in June, meaning we may soon see how the technology works in the face of a real disaster.