ITU/WMO/UNEP Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management: Introduction and call for participation

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have recently partnered to establish the Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Natural Disaster Management (FG-AI4NDM). FG-AI4NDM is exploring the potential of AI-based algorithms to support data collection and handling, to improve modeling (i.e., reconstructions, forecasts, and projections) across spatiotemporal scales through extracting complex patterns (and gaining insights) from a growing volume of geospatial data, and to provide effective communication. To achieve these objectives, FG-AI4NDM is building an interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, and international community to explore specific natural disaster use cases. Special effort is made to support participation from low- and mid-income countries and those countries shown to be particularly impacted by these types of events. Here, we will explore: what is an ITU focus group, what are the objectives and planned deliverables of FG-AI4NDM, what progress has been made since its inception, and how members of the geoscience community can become involved.