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 relief effort


Los Angeles couple's harrowing escape as Eaton Fire approached their home caught on video doorbell

FOX News

Jeffrey and Cheryll Ku shared a video recorded on their Ring doorbell showing the terrifying moment the Eaton Fire approached their home. Altadena residents Jeffrey and Cheryll Ku shared harrowing footage of their Jan. The Kus are among Los Angeles residents forced to flee from the wildfires that tore through the city. On social media, the Kus described the experience as "34 minutes of pure terror." "The Eaton fire had just started in the hillside above us and we had to act FAST," Jeffrey Ku wrote in an Instagram post.


Fortnite developer raises $144 MILLION for Ukraine

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Epic Games, the developer of the hugely successful video game Fortnite, has revealed it's raised $144 million (£109.5 million) for Ukraine. In conjunction with Microsoft's Xbox, the firm had pledged to donate all of its proceeds from the game to Ukraine relief efforts for two weeks, starting March 20. The total will fund humanitarian relief efforts led by several charities to help Ukrainian people affected by the ongoing war with Russia, Epic Games said. These charities include UNICEF, Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme. Fornite's Twitter page posted: 'Our deepest thanks to everyone who joined us in supporting humanitarian relief efforts for people affected by the war in Ukraine.


Artificial intelligence and IoT analytics keep aircraft operational for crucial missions

#artificialintelligence

The C-130 Hercules is the most versatile aircraft in aviation history. From landing at the world's highest airstrip in the Himalayas to taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the aircraft is celebrated for its unsurpassed versatility, performance and mission effectiveness. Today, 70 countries rely on the C-130 for search and rescue, peacekeeping, medical evacuations, scientific research, military operations, aerial refueling and humanitarian relief. More than 2,500 C-130s have been produced to date. The worldwide operational fleet includes legacy C-130 models as well as the current production variant – the C-130J Super Hercules.


Humanitarian efforts could be aided by AI

#artificialintelligence

Researchers have developed an AI algorithm to accurately predict the gender of pre-paid mobile phone users, which could be useful in crises. Phone tracking technology is already used to locate those in need of aid in humanitarian crises; but the latest development could help further, for example by identifying vulnerable groups such as women with potentially young children. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies in the developing world with global penetration rates reaching 90 per cent. However, the fact that most phones in developing countries are pre-paid means that the data lacks key information about the person carrying the phone, including gender and other demographic data, which could be useful in a crisis. Now, a team of researchers from the Data Science Institute and Department of Computing at Imperial College London have developed a machine learning algorithm, which is a form of AI.


People, Quakes, and Communications: Inferences from Call Dynamics about a Seismic Event and its Influences on a Population

Kapoor, Ashish (Microsoft Research) | Eagle, Nathan (The Santa Fe Institute) | Horvitz, Eric (Microsoft Research)

AAAI Conferences

We explore the prospect of inferring the epicenter and influences of seismic activity from changes in background phone communication activities logged at cell towers. In particular, we explore the perturbations in Rwandan call data invoked by an earthquake in February 2008 centered in the Lac Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Beyond the initial seismic event, we investigate the challenge of assessing the distribution of the persistence of needs over geographic regions, using the persistence of call anomalies after the earthquake as a proxy for lasting influences and the potential need for assistance. We also infer uncertainties in the inferences and consider the prospect of identifying the value of surveying the areas so that surveillance resources can be best triaged.