By: Abby Walker, Northwest Region

When disaster strikes, teams of Red Cross workers can be found at the heart of the damage: helping families, sheltering victims, and assessing the damage done to people’s homes. When the scope of disaster spans hundreds of miles, or even states, it can be a daunting task. It is a task, however, that the Red Cross is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft to reimagine through artificial intelligence (AI). 

Over the last few years, innovation teams at the Red Cross have been working with tech organizations to develop tools that will efficiently reduce time-and-cost elements of disaster assessment, according to Kasie Richards, Senior Director of Situational Awareness and Decision Support for the Red Cross.

Richards has been working closely with teams at Microsoft, who have developed an AI model which can look at satellite imagery and provide overall assessments on damage to infrastructure. For the Red Cross, it’s a tool to help prioritize response areas after a disaster. “If the Red Cross can analyze satellite imagery both pre and post event and have a trained tool that can inform teams where those hotspots of damage are, we can better determine what services are needed in those communities,” said Richards. 

Having this type of information within the first couple of days of an operation could cause a major shift in the Red Cross response by allowing teams to analyze disaster areas via imagery within the first few days, when the hardest hit communities can be unsafe and difficult to access.

“I think it's fantastic,” said Cameron Birge, senior program manager with Microsoft Philanthropies. “Using the power of AI, we can help first response agencies make sure critical resources are more quickly deployed to the areas that need them most, and that can mean saving lives in the time of a disaster. AI can analyze data around disasters in just hours that would take humans days. We believe in empowering first response agencies and using technology to help organizations like the Red Cross do their jobs faster. We're just proud to be part of that, to play our small role in this.” 

Meanwhile, the Red Cross is working with innovators at AWS to develop a tool that utilizes AWS AI Services to assess the level of structural damage done to a specific home after a disaster – a job currently done manually by teams of Red Cross volunteers.

The project underway uses images taken by cameras attached to cars in a disaster area and processes the data, using AWS AI services, to determine the extent of damage to each home by address. Given this task is one currently done manually by teams of volunteers on foot, this technology will relieve manpower and help the Red Cross more quickly deliver mission-critical services to those affected by disasters.

“As the disaster response team’s needs grow with increasing disasters, we need to be able to scale our operations or be able to spread out our volunteers over multiple disasters,” said Richards. “This tool will allow us to do just that.” 

Once implemented, this tool has the capability to accelerate individual home damage assessments within the Red Cross from weeks to days, with the initial AI assessment completed in hours after images are uploaded. 

“We know that response times are critical in a disaster,” said Allyson Fryhoff, managing director of the AWS Nonprofit and Nonprofit Health. “The Red Cross is a leader in disaster response and AWS is proud to support their work with advanced technologies like AI. By using AI, they will require less people on the ground, accelerate response times, and automate burdensome tasks, allowing their team to focus on what really matters: their mission. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with the American Red Cross to explore how cloud technology can further improve damage assessment and provide community support after disasters.” 

For the technological advances both teams have on the horizon, Richards says she’s excited. “The potential is substantial for us to be able to inform, make decisions, speed up efficiency, and reduce some of the guesswork."

The American Red Cross name and logo are used with its permission, which in no way constitutes an endorsement of any product, service, company, opinion or political position.