A group of prominent scientists, nominated by the Academy Networks of SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies), part of the Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Commission, is delivering today a new report on the role of artificial intelligence in emergency and crisis management. The report is being offered to Maciej Popowski, Director-General of the European Commission’s DG ECHO (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations).
SAPEA Rapid Evidence Review Report: Artificial Intelligence in Emergency and Crisis Management
The Scientific Advice Mechanism provides independent scientific evidence and policy recommendations to the European institutions. Scientists play a crucial role in guiding EU policy, especially in areas like AI in emergency and crisis management, where cross-sectoral coordination across Europe is essential.
AI offers significant potential to enhance emergency and crisis management in certain situations. Adopting a socio-technical lens, the report holds that 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.
Evidence suggests that AI performs best on standardised, data-intensive tasks typical in frequent disasters such as floods, wildfires, and droughts. It excels at repetitive monitoring tasks important for early warning systems and can process social media and assess damage at scales and speeds beyond the reach of human analysts. However, AI is not well suited to interpreting highly heterogeneous contexts or new situations where appropriate training data is lacking. Moreover, morally challenging decisions and trade-offs should not be referred to an AI tool.
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, before 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.
“Crises cross borders, but data is managed at the national level, leading to different standards. This diversity can lead to fragmentation in the data landscape that AI cannot easily bridge. Data preparedness is an important step to connecting these data systems that provide the necessary foundation for AI to provide effective decision support in European crisis management,” explained Professor Tina Comes, chair of the SAPEA working group on Artificial Intelligence in Emergency and Crisis Management.
When to use AI for crisis management and when to take alternative routes (Figure 6. Artificial Intelligence in Emergency and Crisis Management report)
The IDAEA-CSIC researcher, Marta López Saavedra, participated as an invited expert in the workshop “The Role and Use of Artificial Intelligence for Crisis Management”, organised in support of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM). The conclusions of this workshop have contributed to the preparation of an evidence synthesis report, which serves as a preliminary step to the SAPEA report for DG ECHO.
According to Dr Saavedra, a member of the Natural Risk Assessment and Management Service (NRAMS) at IDAEA-CSIC, specialised in the assessment and management of natural hazards using advanced technology:
“This report is especially valuable because it helps clarify, in accessible language, what artificial intelligence can actually contribute in crisis situations and what precautions must be taken to use it safely. It provides clear guidance on which types of tasks AI is useful for, what data it requires, how it should be evaluated, and why maintaining human oversight is always essential.”
“This work provides a solid foundation for informed decision-making: it explains the opportunities, highlights the real limitations, and proposes practical measures to ensure that any AI tool is used in a responsible, ethical way and aligned with the protection of people. At a time when crises are becoming increasingly complex, having such a framework is crucial for strengthening anticipation, coordination and resilience,” the researcher adds.
