AI can improve disaster prediction

Which are often hard for humans to identify on their own

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped researchers achieve 89 to 99 per cent accuracy in identifying tropical cyclones, weather fronts and atmospheric rivers — the latter of which can cause heavy precipitation and are often hard for humans to identify on their own.



By improving weather forecasts, such programmes can help keep vast human settlements safe. This was stated by State Minister for Climate ChanPHOTOge Zartaj Gul Wazir on Wednesday while addressing the closing session of an international conference on the role of AI in environment monitoring at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS). The conference’s theme this year was ‘AI– A game-changer for climate change and the environment’.



Wazir said that the government is currently enforcing a plastic bag ban in Islamabad and that their priority is to implement this ban across the country. She further emphasised that advances in AI could be one of the solutions to solving major global environmental crises—from climate change to animal endangerment to disease containment. She later planted a tree in the main campus.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 22^nd, 2019.