Introduction to Crisis

While many people concentrate on positive aspects, such as creating or acquiring more appealing tools for everyday life, some people also pay attention to people’s challenges and difficulties and offer useful solutions to enhance personal and social conditions. Like handling crises. Crisis is a part of life and one should always be prepared for it. The necessary tools for forecasting and management should be possessed by one, so that in the event of a crisis, it can be faced and managed by governments and the general public in the fastest and best way, minimizing casualties, physical damages, and social damages.

A crisis refers to a predicament that endangers the regular operations of an organization or an individual, demanding an immediate reaction to mitigate the adverse aftermaths. Crises may arise from external circumstances like calamities, conflicts, or internal factors such as inadequate management, ethical controversies, or human blunders.

In today's ever-changing and intricate world, crises are bound to happen, and they come without warning. It is imperative for both organizations and individuals to anticipate and brace themselves for these potential crises. Moreover, they must develop efficient tactics to confront and resolve them. In this blog entry, we will delve into various categories of crises that can transpire in the contemporary era. We will also explore the difficulties associated with foreseeing and handling such predicaments, as well as the limitations of traditional crisis management systems.

Coping with adverse situations that endanger the functioning, standing, or survival of individuals and organizations is a deliberate and thoughtful method known as crisis management. In our current era, these threats have undergone a significant evolution, encompassing larger scales and intricate interdependencies. As a result, it has become crucial for everyone to establish a well-functioning crisis management scheme. This article aims to explore the various categories of crises, their repercussions, the ability to anticipate such events, the difficulties encountered in managing them, and the limitations of traditional crisis management systems.

Crises can be divided into 3 main categories:

• Sudden crises: These are crises that occur unexpectedly and without warning, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, accidents, etc. These crises are usually caused by external factors that are beyond the control of the affected parties. These crises are difficult to predict and prevent, but they can be mitigated by having contingency plans and emergency response teams.
• Preventable crises: These are crises that gradually evolve over time due to internal factors that are either known or should have been known by those affected, such as inadequate management, unethical conduct, and faulty function. Often, these crises are disregarded or concealed until they reach the public eye and cause significant harm. While these crises are relatively more straightforward to predict and prevent compared to unforeseen crises, they still require proactive monitoring and intervention.
• Exceptional crises: Such as pandemics, nuclear disasters, or invasions. These crises arise because of unforeseeable external to the ones impacted. It is a hard and complex task to predict or hinder such crises, but they can be efficiently handled by adjusting to the evolving situations and drawing lessons from previous encounters.

Most important types of crises:

• Pandemic Crisis: An outbreak of disease that impacts a substantial portion of the global population. 
• War Crisis: A fierce confrontation between two or more nations or factions.
• Security Crisis: A threat or compromise to the well-being or security of a group, institution, or nation.
• Environmental Crisis: The destruction or deterioration of the natural environment caused by human activities. 
• Humanitarian Crisis: Numerous individuals are affected by violence, illness, hunger, displacement, or violations of human rights. 
• Economic Crisis: A severe downturn in the economy of a country or region. 
• Political Crisis: A disruption or instability in the political system or governance of a country or region.
• Social Crisis: A breakdown or conflict in the social relationships or norms of a group or society. 
• Ethnic Crisis: Tension or violence between various ethnic groups or communities.
• Religious Crisis: A disagreement or persecution rooted in religious beliefs or practices.
• Moral Crisis: A violation or challenge to the moral standards or principles of a group or society.
• Identity Crisis: Confusion or conflict regarding one's sense of self, role, or sense of belonging.

• Energy Crisis: Insufficiency or unreliability in the supply of energy resources to meet demand.

  All types of crises can be managed better and more efficiently with a modern crisis management system and planning.

 Impacts of Crises

Crises have profound ramifications on individuals, establishments, and communities. Several consequences include: 

• Demise and destruction: Crises can result in fatalities and devastation, leaving individuals and communities in anguish and despair. 
• Financial repercussions: Crises can impact the economy, leading to joblessness, financial turmoil, and destitution for numerous individuals. 
• Ecological repercussions: Crises can inflict harm on the environment, generating pollution, waste, and the depletion of habitats, jeopardizing the future of the natural world. 
• Societal repercussions: Crises can exacerbate social issues, resulting in migration, violence, and scarcities of resources, ultimately leading to societal instability and conflict. 
• Psychological repercussions: Crises can inflict harm on mental well-being, instigating trauma, stress, and anxiety, which in turn affect the overall happiness and welfare of those affected. Crises are not solely physical catastrophes. They can also disrupt the regular functioning of society, weaken the economy, erode public confidence, and create enduring mental and emotional challenges in the long run.
• Long-term Impact: Crises can have long-lasting effects on individuals, communities, and societies, including chronic stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Loss of Trust: If crises persist over a longer period of time, a loss of trust in existing rules and norms usually takes place.
• Political Impact: Crises often have political implications, leading to changes in governance, policies, and power dynamics. They can challenge the legitimacy of governments, increase social unrest, and shape political agendas and priorities.

Approach to Crisis Management

Crises are unpredictable and can strike at any time, posing serious threats to governments and society. To cope with these challenges, organizations need to adopt proactive crisis management strategies that can prevent or mitigate the impact of crises. Crisis management is the process of coordinating complex technical and relational systems and designing effective organizational responses. It involves addressing the following challenges:

• Response Coordination: Crises require fast and flexible responses that can adapt to changing situations.
• Situation Assessment: Crises create uncertainty and complexity, making it hard to understand the problem and the best solution.
• Resource Allocation: Crises demand significant resources, such as staff, equipment, and money, which may be scarce or unavailable.
• Communication Management: Crises require clear and consistent communication that can inform and reassure all stakeholders.
• Public Perception: Crises generate high expectations from the public, putting pressure on organizations to perform well under scrutiny. To manage these challenges successfully, organizations need to adopt a holistic approach that covers crisis communication, resource allocation, stakeholder engagement, and recovery planning. However, traditional crisis management systems often fail to cope with the complexities of modern crises due to their inflexible structures, slow decision-making processes, and limited ability to handle real-time information.

Issues of Classic Systems to Manage Crises

Crises are complex and dynamic phenomena that require effective management. However, classic systems to manage crises have some limitations that need to be overcome. For instance:

• They are more reactive than proactive: Classic systems often wait for a crisis to happen before taking action, rather than anticipating and preventing it.
• They are short-sighted rather than long-term oriented: Classic systems often focus on resolving the immediate problem, rather than addressing the root causes and preventing future recurrence.
• They are not always suitable for complex crises: Classic systems often struggle to cope with the uncertainty and volatility of modern crises, which involve multiple actors, factors, and dimensions.
• They are not always adaptable to changing situations: Classic systems often stick to rigid plans and procedures, rather than adjusting to the changing needs and realities of the situation. Classic systems to manage crises usually follow a top-down, linear, and standardized approach. While this approach has been successful in dealing with some types of crises, it often fails to respond effectively to the fast-changing and unpredictable nature of contemporary crises. The classic systems lack the flexibility and agility needed to adapt quickly and creatively to new challenges. Furthermore, the classic systems rely on vertical communication channels, which can limit the information flow and cooperation among stakeholders.

Managing crises using Artificial Intelligence (for the general public)

Crisis management is the act of getting ready for, reacting to, and bouncing back from a crisis. It includes recognizing and evaluating dangers, making and executing designs and methodologies, imparting and organizing with invested individuals, and assessing and gaining from the results. Coping with a crisis is a demanding mission that demands promptness, precision, dependability, and adaptability.

Artificial intelligence (AI) denotes the field of crafting computer systems to showcase intelligence and behavior akin to humans through a fusion of approaches like information processing, data analysis, and machine learning. In the past years, AI has made significant strides, owing to the abundance of extensive data, potent computing resources, and groundbreaking algorithms. The scope of AI extends across diverse realms and undertakings, encompassing healthcare, education, entertainment, security, and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can vastly contribute to crisis management by offering prompt, efficient, and dependable solutions. Nonetheless, it also presents certain ethical, societal, and technological hurdles that necessitate attention. AI can play a pivotal part in augmenting the crisis management procedure through the provision of astute and automated support to users. It can assist in mitigating the overwhelming influx of information and eradicating inaccuracies and misleading data. This, in turn, heightens users' comprehension of the situation at hand and bolsters their decision-making capabilities. Additionally, AI equips users with pertinent knowledge and proficiencies, facilitates collaboration and coordination among diverse stakeholders, and amplifies the efficiency and effectiveness of crisis response.

Benefits of a crisis AI system:

• Enhance the situational awareness and decision-making, predict, and recommend the best actions and strategies for the crisis response.
• Empower the users with relevant knowledge and skills, and provide guidance, feedback, and training to the users on how to handle the crisis situation.
• Reduce the information overload and filter out the noise and misinformation, analyze, summarize, and verify the information and news from various sources.
• Providing basic medical, specialized health, and psychological consultations.
• Providing advice related to movement, and receiving basic needs in times of crisis. 
• Providing general reports and statistics and introducing the best methods, places, and related organizations to the public.
• Create a responsive and efficient alarm system in advance or at the onset of a crisis to promptly inform users about the current situation and propose smart courses of action. 
• Facilitate the collaboration and coordination among different actors, and enable effective communication, information sharing, and task allocation among the users.
• Much more…

Challenges and Limitations of AI for Crisis Management:

The significance of ethical and societal issues cannot be overstated when dealing with AI systems. It is imperative that these systems conform to human values and maintain the rights and dignity of all individuals affected. Furthermore, they ought to exhibit transparency, fairness, accountability, and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, accomplishing these objectives is no simple feat. AI systems have the capacity to inadvertently yield unfavorable outcomes, biases, or mistakes that could potentially jeopardize the well-being of people or the environment. Additionally, ethical dilemmas may surface, raising questions about the accountability for the actions of AI systems, the necessity for human supervision and authority, and the fragile equilibrium between privacy and security.

Technical and operational hurdles also have a noteworthy impact on the advancement and execution of AI systems. These systems should demonstrate resilience, dependability, and expandability to outshine in a wide range of circumstances and conditions. Moreover, they ought to be capable of clarifying their decisions and actions, particularly when they affect human lives or well-being. Nonetheless, the procedure of conceiving and implementing AI systems is anything but a straightforward task. It requires a significant quantity of information, computational power, expertise, and assets. Additionally, there may arise technical obstacles, such as guaranteeing the quality of data, validating models, assessing performance, safeguarding against adversarial attacks, and addressing safety apprehensions.

Regulatory and legal hurdles pose a significant challenge in the realm of AI systems. These systems are required to adhere to the laws and regulations of the countries and regions where they function. Furthermore, they must be subjected to suitable governance and oversight mechanisms to ensure their ethical and responsible use. However, regulating AI systems is a multifaceted issue, necessitating the delicate balancing of promoting innovation and offering protection. This also entails the coordination of efforts among diverse stakeholders and jurisdictions. Furthermore, legal obstacles may emerge, encompassing various subjects like intellectual property rights, liability, consent, and accountability.

Best Practices and Recommendations for Using AI for Crisis Management: 

AI has the potential to be an immensely influential instrument in handling crisis circumstances and guaranteeing the well-being of individuals and communities. Nevertheless, it also presents a myriad of difficulties and hazards that demand meticulous attention. 

Compilation of supreme methodologies and suggestions to proficiently employ AI in crisis management:

Use open-source tools and data: Utilizing accessible tools and data of the open-source variety has the potential to guarantee the transparency, accountability, and reproducibility of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Moreover, it has the ability to foster collaboration and innovation among diverse stakeholders and communities. In addition, open-source tools and data possess the capability to diminish the expenses and intricacies associated with the development and implementation of AI systems.

Adopt state-of-the-art hybrid AI techniques: Hybrid AI techniques combine different types of AI methods, such as generative and extractive methods, to leverage their strengths and overcome their limitations. Hybrid AI techniques can help to achieve higher levels of performance, reliability, robustness, explainability, and adaptability of AI systems. They can also enable more natural and effective interaction with users in natural language.

Design user-friendly, adaptable, and trustworthy systems: Systems that are easy to use, flexible, and reliable have the potential to improve the satisfaction and overall experience of users with AI systems. Intuitive and user-friendly interfaces are essential for accommodating the diverse needs and preferences of users. Additionally, systems that can adapt to varying circumstances and incorporate user feedback are crucial for staying up-to-date and meeting user expectations. Ensuring the trustworthiness of AI systems is paramount, as it encompasses factors such as reliability, security, privacy, fairness, and ethical considerations. By prioritizing these qualities, AI systems can deliver optimal performance and instill confidence in their users.

Perform various functions and tasks: AI systems for crisis management should be able to perform various functions and tasks that can help users in different aspects of crisis situations. Some of the functions and tasks include information filtering, situational awareness, decision-making, knowledge empowerment, collaboration, and coordination. Some of the specific needs and tasks include general advice, individual needs, geolocation management, communication with organizations, virtual doctor, migrants management, and kidnapping management.

Integrate with other crisis management systems and tools: AI systems designed for crisis management ought to possess the capacity to incorporate with other systems and tools that are utilized in crisis management. These additional systems and tools can provide supplementary or complementary information and services. For instance, AI systems have the capability to merge with various platforms of social media, as well as geographic information systems, emergency response systems, health care systems, and humanitarian aid systems, among others.

Ensure the quality and performance of AI systems: AI systems for crisis management rely heavily on the quality and performance of their operations. Quality encompasses various factors, including precision, comprehensiveness, coherence, timeliness, pertinence, and validity. Likewise, performance relates to the promptness, effectiveness, scalability, accessibility, and other attributes of these AI systems. To guarantee high-quality and top-notch performance, it is crucial to undertake meticulous due diligence procedures that assess the system's capabilities, adherence to regulations, and ability to address potential threats and weaknesses. Such measures enhance the reliability and dependability of AI systems in crisis management scenarios.

Ensure Data Security: Integrating AI into crisis management comes with its own set of challenges, including data privacy concerns, lack of understanding and trust in AI systems, data quality issues, and ethical considerations. Therefore, data security should take precedence.

Foster Interdisciplinary Collaborations: Collaboration between AI experts, crisis management professionals, and policymakers is essential for leveraging AI's potential effectively. By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, we can ensure that AI technologies align with the specific needs and contexts of crisis management. This collaboration can drive innovation, refine AI applications, and ensure that the technology serves as a powerful tool in the hands of those responding to and managing crises.

Ensure Effective Communication: While AI can provide valuable support in crisis management, the value of human expertise and decision-making in crisis management is irreplaceable. Therefore, it is important to ensure effective communication between AI and human responders. This can be achieved by tailoring crisis management messages to different stakeholders, delivering speeches with authenticity and empathy, and navigating complex situations that may arise during a crisis.

Conduct Due Diligence: Due diligence is a vital process that ensures the quality and performance of AI systems. It helps to verify the system’s capabilities and compliance, as well as to mitigate any potential risks and vulnerabilities. By conducting thorough due diligence for AI systems, they can provide valuable support to users in crisis situations by using state-of-the-art open-source AI techniques and reliable data.

Conclusion

In conclusion, crises are an inevitable part of life, and it is essential to be prepared for them. Crisis management is the process of coordinating complex technical and relational systems and designing effective organizational responses. It involves addressing challenges such as response coordination, situation assessment, resource allocation, communication management, and public perception. Traditional crisis management systems often fail to cope with the complexities of modern crises due to their inflexible structures, slow decision-making processes, and limited ability to handle real-time information. Artificial intelligence (AI) can vastly contribute to crisis management by offering prompt, efficient, and dependable solutions. AI can play a pivotal part in augmenting the crisis management procedure through the provision of astute and automated support to users. However, AI also presents certain ethical, societal, and technological hurdles that necessitate attention. AI systems for crisis management should be able to perform various functions and tasks that can help users in different aspects of crisis situations. They should also ensure data security, foster interdisciplinary collaborations, and ensure effective communication between AI and human responders. 

By prioritizing these features, artificial intelligence systems can provide optimal performance and build trust in their users to perform more comprehensively in crises and reduce material and moral damages.

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Ali Kazemi

Carrefour Security & Safety Department Manager
Artificial Intelligence Researcher & Developer
email: eng.ali.kazemi@outlook.com

I would be grateful to have the opportunity to communicate with EU authorities or companies to participate in, consult, build, plan, or implement crisis systems using AI.