Rufai Omowunmi Balogun

Primary Convener:
Rufai Omowunmi Balogun, NASA Lifelines

The rising frequency and complexity of humanitarian crises in the 21st century, from armed conflicts, public health emergencies, to food insecurity and environmental disasters, demand rapid, reliable, and actionable intelligence for decision-makers across the disaster lifecycle. These crises vary in scale, type, and timing, requiring diverse monitoring, forecasting, and response approaches. This session explores the transformative role of GeoAI (Geospatial AI) as a critical enabler for anticipatory action, rapid emergency response, and post-disaster recovery. Through our expert panels and co-developed case studies from NASA Lifelines, we aim to exchange ideas with the broader geoscience community on the prospects and challenges of utilizing Earth Observation and Artificial Intelligence for Humanitarian Action.

Critical topics such as ethics, transparency, anticipatory action, disaster recovery and reconstruction, and how GeoAI can help support humanitarian actors in high-stakes environments would be discussed. In all, participants will gain a pragmatic view of the landscape of humanitarian action, opportunities and challenges for deploying EO and AI pipelines in fragile environments, insights into governance and ethical safeguards, and a synthesis of lessons learned for building scalable, trustworthy crisis intelligence systems that serve both affected communities and global response networks.

Index Terms
1926 Geospatial
4337 Remote sensing and disasters
4341 Early warning systems
4346 Emergency response and evacuations

Cross-Listed:
NH - Natural Hazards
IN - Informatics
SY - Science and Society
GH - GeoHealth