Abstract-- This paper presents a UA V swarm system designed to assist first responders in disaster scenarios like wildfires. By distributing sensors across multiple agents, the system extends flight duration and enhances data availability, reducing the risk of mission failure due to collisions. T o mitigate this risk further, we introduce an autonomous navigation framework that utilizes a local Euclidean Signed Distance Field (ESDF) map for obstacle avoidance while maintaining swarm formation with minimal path deviation. Additionally, we incorporate a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) variant to optimize area coverage, prioritizing Points of Interest (POIs) based on preas-signed values derived from environmental behavior and critical infrastructure. The proposed system is validated through simulations with varying swarm sizes, demonstrating its ability to maximize coverage while ensuring collision avoidance between UA Vs and obstacles.

Effective and efficient access to relevant information is essential for disaster management. However, no retrieval model is specialized for disaster management, and existing general-domain models fail to handle the varied search intents inherent to disaster management scenarios, resulting in inconsistent and unreliable performance. To this end, we introduce DMRetriever, the first series of dense retrieval models (33M to 7.6B) tailored for this domain. It is trained through a novel three-stage framework of bidirectional attention adaptation, unsupervised contrastive pre-training, and difficulty-aware progressive instruction fine-tuning, using high-quality data generated through an advanced data refinement pipeline. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that DMRetriever achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance across all six search intents at every model scale. Moreover, DMRetriever is highly parameter-efficient, with 596M model outperforming baselines over 13.3 X larger and 33M model exceeding baselines with only 7.6% of their parameters. All codes, data, and checkpoints are available at https://github.com/KaiYin97/DMRETRIEVER

In high-stakes disaster scenarios, timely and informed decision-making is critical yet often challenged by uncertainty, dynamic environments, and limited resources. This paper presents a systematic review of Human-AI collaboration patterns that support decision-making across all disaster management phases. Drawing from 51 peer-reviewed studies, we identify four major categories: Human-AI Decision Support Systems, Task and Resource Coordination, Trust and Transparency, and Simulation and Training. Within these, we analyze sub-patterns such as cognitive-augmented intelligence, multi-agent coordination, explainable AI, and virtual training environments. Our review highlights how AI systems may enhance situational awareness, improves response efficiency, and support complex decision-making, while also surfacing critical limitations in scalability, interpretability, and system interoperability. We conclude by outlining key challenges and future research directions, emphasizing the need for adaptive, trustworthy, and context-aware Human-AI systems to improve disaster resilience and equitable recovery outcomes.

With artificial intelligence (AI) being applied to bring autonomy to decision-making in safety-critical domains such as the ones typified in the aerospace and emergency-response services, there has been a call to address the ethical implications of structuring those decisions, so they remain reliable and justifiable when human lives are at stake. This paper contributes to addressing the challenge of decision-making by proposing a structured decision-making framework as a foundational step towards responsible AI. The proposed structured decision-making framework is implemented in autonomous decision-making, specifically within disaster management. By introducing concepts of Enabler agents, Levels and Scenarios, the proposed framework's performance is evaluated against systems relying solely on judgement-based insights, as well as human operators who have disaster experience: victims, volunteers, and stakeholders. The results demonstrate that the structured decision-making framework achieves 60.94% greater stability in consistently accurate decisions across multiple Scenarios, compared to judgement-based systems. Moreover, the study shows that the proposed framework outperforms human operators with a 38.93% higher accuracy across various Scenarios. These findings demonstrate the promise of the structured decision-making framework for building more reliable autonomous AI applications in safety-critical contexts.

--Effective disaster management requires timely and accurate insights, yet traditional methods struggle to integrate multimodal data such as images, weather records, and textual reports. T o address this, we propose DisasterNet-LLM, a specialized Large Language Model (LLM) designed for comprehensive disaster analysis. By leveraging advanced pretraining, cross-modal attention mechanisms, and adaptive transformers, DisasterNet-LLM excels in disaster classification. Experimental results demonstrate its superiority over state-of-the-art models, achieving higher accuracy of 89.5%, an F1 score of 88.0%, AUC of 0.92%, and BERTScore of 0.88% in multimodal disaster classification tasks. Disasters, both natural and human-made, have increasingly devastating consequences that affect millions of lives, disrupt economies, and damage critical infrastructure [1, 2].

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized scientific research with their exceptional capabilities and transformed various fields. Among their practical applications, LLMs have been playing a crucial role in mitigating threats to human life, infrastructure, and the environment. Despite growing research in disaster LLMs, there remains a lack of systematic review and in-depth analysis of LLMs for natural disaster management. To address the gap, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of existing LLMs in natural disaster management, along with a taxonomy that categorizes existing works based on disaster phases and application scenarios. By collecting public datasets and identifying key challenges and opportunities, this study aims to guide the professional community in developing advanced LLMs for disaster management to enhance the resilience against natural disasters.

This paper presents an advanced mapping system that combines drone imagery with machine learning and computer vision to overcome challenges in speed, accuracy, and adaptability across diverse terrains. By automating processes like feature detection, image matching, and stitching, the system produces seamless, high-resolution maps with minimal latency, offering strategic advantages in defense operations. Developed in Python, the system utilizes OpenCV for image processing, NumPy for efficient computations, and Concurrent[dot]futures for parallel execution. ORB (Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF) is employed for feature detection, while FLANN (Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors) ensures accurate keypoint matching. Homography transformations align overlapping images, resulting in distortion-free maps in real time. This automation eliminates manual intervention, enabling live updates essential in rapidly changing environments. Designed for versatility, the system performs reliably under various lighting conditions and rugged terrains, making it highly suitable for aerospace and defense applications. Testing has shown notable improvements in processing speed and accuracy compared to conventional methods, enhancing situational awareness and informed decision-making. This scalable solution leverages cutting-edge technologies to provide actionable, reliable data for mission-critical operations.

The integration of social media and artificial intelligence (AI) into disaster management, particularly for earthquake response, represents a profound evolution in emergency management practices. In the digital age, real-time information sharing has reached unprecedented levels, with social media platforms emerging as crucial communication channels during crises. This shift has transformed traditional, centralized emergency services into more decentralized, participatory models of disaster situational awareness. Our study includes an experimental analysis of 8,900 social media interactions, including 2,920 posts and 5,980 replies on X (formerly Twitter), following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake in Oklahoma on February 2, 2024. The analysis covers data from the immediate aftermath and extends over the following seven days, illustrating the critical role of digital platforms in modern disaster response. The results demonstrate that social media platforms can be effectively used as real-time situational awareness tools, delivering critical information to society and authorities during emergencies.

The number of people living in urban areas has tripled in the last 50 years, meaning when a major natural disaster such as an earthquake strikes a city, more lives are in danger. Meanwhile, the strength and frequency of extreme weather events has increased--a trend set to continue as the climate warms. That is spurring efforts around the world to develop a new generation of earthquake monitoring and climate forecasting systems to make detecting and responding to disasters quicker, cheaper, and more accurate than ever. On Nov. 6, at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, the Global Initiative on Resilience to Natural Hazards through AI Solutions will meet for the first time. The new United Nations initiative aims to guide governments, organizations, and communities in using AI for disaster management.

Managing complex disaster risks requires interdisciplinary efforts. Breaking down silos between law, social sciences, and natural sciences is critical for all processes of disaster risk reduction. This enables adaptive systems for the rapid evolution of AI technology, which has significantly impacted the intersection of law and natural environments. Exploring how AI influences legal frameworks and environmental management, while also examining how legal and environmental considerations can confine AI within the socioeconomic domain, is essential. From a co-production review perspective, drawing on insights from lawyers, social scientists, and environmental scientists, principles for responsible data mining are proposed based on safety, transparency, fairness, accountability, and contestability. This discussion offers a blueprint for interdisciplinary collaboration to create adaptive law systems based on AI integration of knowledge from environmental and social sciences. Discrepancies in the use of language between environmental scientists and decision-makers in terms of usefulness and accuracy hamper how AI can be used based on the principles of legal considerations for a safe, trustworthy, and contestable disaster management framework. When social networks are useful for mitigating disaster risks based on AI, the legal implications related to privacy and liability of the outcomes of disaster management must be considered. Fair and accountable principles emphasise environmental considerations and foster socioeconomic discussions related to public engagement. AI also has an important role to play in education, bringing together the next generations of law, social sciences, and natural sciences to work on interdisciplinary solutions in harmony.