Retailers love to burble on about how cool and smart their supply chains are, yet come a crisis like COVID-19, toilet roll and hand sanitizer are suddenly rarer than strong political leadership. The truth is, the weak link remains with the in-store reporting of sales back to local or regional HQ and an inability to respond to fast-moving changes through the supply chain. AI and Bots will help out next time a similar event comes around by dynamically responding to changes across the supply chain. Bots and AI are already well entrenched in our supply chains, but not to the extent retail business leaders would like to think. Even a minor shock can impact individual stores and there are plenty of examples beyond the current crisis.

Google is promising more than $4 million in grant funding for Australian projects creating technology that will help with crisis response, preparedness and resilience for crises to come. According to a blog post by Google Australia managing director Mel Silva, the tech giant has already been working with the National Bushfire Recovery Agency to identify areas where technology can play a role in solving problems for communities. The new crisis fund will give a cash boost to projects creating innovative technology, said Silva, with a special focus on artificial intelligence technology. "Through the new Crisis Response and Recovery Fund we will work with the Australian Government, academia, non-profits and community groups to find and support projects that use emerging technology, particularly AI (Artificial Intelligence) to help with crisis response, preparedness and resilience," she said. Projects will be assessed and chosen by a panel of technology experts, Silva said.

Crisis response poses many of the most difficult information technology in crisis management. It requires information and communication-intensive efforts, utilized for reducing uncertainty, calculating and comparing costs and benefits, and managing resources in a fashion beyond those regularly available to handle routine problems. In this paper, we explore the benefits of artificial intelligence technologies in crisis response. This paper discusses the role of artificial intelligence technologies; namely, robotics, ontology and semantic web, and multi-agent systems in crisis response.