Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO) announced the creation of the First Five Consortium (First Five). Co-Chaired with Microsoft Corporation, First Five was formed in response to the January 2020 White House Executive Forum focused on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response. This cross-cut of industry, government, non-profit, and academia has pledged their in-kind support to develop solutions that will improve the impact mitigation of natural disasters in the United States.
DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is currently scaling a prototype initially developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) that uses deep learning algorithms to provide near real-time data to improve the decision making of our nation’s First Responders. Since 2019, the JAIC has led the development of AI capability through its National Mission Initiatives.
“AITO is proud to lead on getting near real-time information into the hands of our First Responders,” said Cheryl Ingstad, Director of AITO. “This will allow them to save more lives and protect assets and our nation’s resources. This is just one project of the broader effort, which will include contributions from all our partners, to use technology to improve humanitarian assistance and disaster response in our nation.”