New Initiative Will Lead Transformational AI Innovations for Global Humanitarian Assistance During Disasters

REDLANDS, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — November 6, 2019 — Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, announced that Esri and partner Figure Eight Technologies, Inc. have been awarded a contract in support of Department of Defense, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), prototyping advancements in rapid damage and consequence assessment during disasters.

The world is faced with what emergency response professionals call the new normal. This means disasters are occurring with both increased frequency and massive impacts to communities at a scale which cannot be readily understood and mitigated through traditional methods used today by first responders, NGOs, government partners, and commercial entities.

Under the JAIC, the Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HADR) National Mission Initiative (NMI) leads the fielding of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-powered, problem solving prototypical applications to quickly identify and locate people and infrastructure impacted by natural and manmade disasters. The development of HADR AI/ML capabilities aims to streamline the processes and architecture of data aggregation, conditioning, and interpretation.

Esri’s ArcGIS platform uses the predictive power of location intelligence combined with AI to provide new insight that enables personnel to make better, data-driven decisions through near-real time situational awareness. Costs to lives and livelihood will be reduced by shrinking operational timelines for search and discovery, resource allocation, and rescue or relief execution efforts.

In support of the HADR NMI providing global humanitarian assistance, training of deep learning models and inference against imagery sources will happen at scale. This solves the complex spatial problem of massive deployment of resources by rapidly distinguishing object and areas for issues such as locating flood affected areas, or identifying at-risk infrastructure and people in need of help.

ArcGIS provides a geospatial AI foundation that will enable JAIC’s analysts, data scientists, and decision makers to collaborate closely together in an iterative fashion. They will be able to quickly test and validate ideas, prototype models, deploy them to production, and build meaningful information products including Dashboard, Maps, and Apps.

To learn more about how Esri supports emergency response organizations and efforts, visit go.esri.com/disaster_pr.

About Esri

Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, offers the most powerful geospatial cloud available, to help customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations including 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, all 50 state governments, more than half of all counties (large and small), and 87 of the Forbes Top 100 Colleges in the U.S., as well as all 15 Executive Departments of the U.S. Government and dozens of independent agencies. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial information technology, Esri engineers the most advanced solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics. Visit us at esri.com.

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Jo Ann Pruchniewski
Public Relations, Esri
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