Artificial Intelligence in Emergency and Crisis Management#
SAPEA Rapid Evidence Review Report “Artificial Intelligence in Emergency and Crisis Management” published
New scientific evidence on AI in crisis management delivered to the European Commission#
As part of the Scientific Advice Mechanism, SAPEA has delivered independent evidence on artificial intelligence in emergency and crisis management to the European Commission's DG ECHO. The report examines where AI can enhance crisis response and where human oversight remains essential. It addresses critical questions around ethical safeguards, data preparedness, and the need for common European standards.
Key findings include:
- AI performs best on standardised, data-intensive tasks typical in frequent disasters such as floods, wildfires, and droughts
- A European crisis management data preparedness framework could bridge current fragmentation across Member States
- Benchmarks, practical guidelines and sandbox environments are needed before full AI deployment in crisis management
Scientific advice plays a vital role in shaping evidence-informed EU policy on emerging technologies. A unique strength of the SAM is that it brings together experts from across Europe to deliver independent, evidence-based advice.
Download the full report
About the report#
Artificial intelligence can significantly enhance emergency and crisis management across Europe through applications like early warning systems, damage assessment, and decision support, but requires careful ethical oversight, human control, standardized data frameworks, and recognition of its limitations in novel or morally complex situations.
Artificial intelligence offers significant potential to enhance emergency and crisis management, in certain situations. AI can be understood as an ‘umbrella term’ that includes a diverse set of technologies, methodologies and applications, including machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. AI can support situational awareness, forecasting, damage assessment, and decision-making throughout the disaster risk management cycle of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. Crises do not respect national boundaries: AI must reflect the reality of cross-border operations and multi-national crisis response across Europe.
Evidence suggests that AI performs best on standardised, data-intensive tasks that are typical in frequent disasters such as floods, wildfires and droughts. AI is good at repetitive tasks that may be tiring for humans, such as continuous environmental monitoring, which is important for early warning systems. It can also be effective in damage assessment and social media processing, performing at scales and speeds that are impossible for human analysts. It is not well suited to interpreting highly heterogeneous contexts, and in new situations where it lacks appropriate training data. Moreover, morally challenging decisions and trade-offs should not be referred to an AI tool.
AI tools must uphold human dignity, transparency and responsibility, whilst meeting European standards for safety and ethics. Careful monitoring is required to ensure compliance with legal frameworks, avoid algorithmic biases and maintain meaningful human control, where people are ultimately in charge and are thus responsible for AI and any decisions made with it.
The development and implementation of benchmarks, practical guidelines, codes of conduct and sandbox environments for AI in crisis management would allow the testing of AI under supervision and with ethical oversight, prior to full deployment.
A new European crisis management data preparedness framework, with common standards and agreed sharing protocols, could help fill data gaps and promote data harmonisation between Member States, enabling the training of EU-wide AI for relevant EU contexts, and helping deliver better EU crisis management tools.
The Rapid Evidence Review Report was coordinated by ALLEA
, on behalf of SAPEA.
About the Scientific Advice Mechanism#
The Scientific Advice Mechanism provides independent scientific evidence and policy recommendations to the European institutions by request of the College of Commissioners. It includes the Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA) consortium, which gathers expertise from more than 100 institutions across Europe, and the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors (GSCA), who provide independent guidance informed by the evidence.
Contact#
For more information, contact Communications Manager, Justine Moynat, at justine.moynat@sapea.info
