Carnegie Mellon and Meta Partner to Develop AI Tools for Emergency Response

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Science Foundation AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (NSF AI-SDM) and Meta’s AI for Good program are announcing a partnership to develop dynamic situation reports aimed at helping first responders better address natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes and severe winter storms.

NSF AI-SDM researchers will analyze aggregated mobility and connectivity data already collected through Meta’s AI for Good program and incorporate it into clear, simple visualizations to provide actionable insights for emergency managers and responders to use on-the-ground during a disaster. The research team will also incorporate other sources such as satellite imagery, to be combined with Meta’s open source AI models including Segment Anything, DINO and large language models. These tools could help determine compliance with evacuation orders, show where populations remain or when communities begin returning following a disaster. 

“This NSF AI-SDM-Meta collaboration is an excellent example of how academic-industry partnerships can impact social good,” said Rebecca Nugent, head and Fienberg University Professor of CMU’s Department of Statistics and Data Science. “This outreach project aims to help emergency responders better understand population mobility during disasters as well as provide additional related resources to the public.”  

Read more about the project and partnership