Asia-Pacific, Climate Change, Editors’ Choice, Energy, Environment, Featured, Headlines, Natural Resources, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals, TerraViva United Nations
Opinion
A tricycle rider was wading through a flooded area in Kolkata, India.
AI technology will enable better disaster responses by governments and local communities. Credit: Pexels/Dibakar Roy
The UN, which commemorates International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on October 13, encourages citizens and governments to build more disaster-resilient communities and nations.
BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 13 2025 (IPS) – The theme of this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Fund Resilience, Not Disasters,” called for the urgent need to shift from reactive spending on recovery to proactive investment in disaster risk reduction.
Advancements in satellite imagery analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) now enable us to map hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities more effectively, providing timely and clearer insights into who and what is at risk, and guiding more targeted investments in resilience and disaster preparedness. Leveraging these advances is essential to building resilience and is an imperative to safeguard lives and livelihoods in Asia and the Pacific – the world’s most disaster-prone region.
Building on advances in big Earth data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, a new tool – SatGPT – offers an innovative solution that supports flood risk mapping. Developed by UN ESCAP in collaboration with regional technical and institutional partners, it represents a functional, next-generation spatial decision support system designed for rapid deployment, which would be most beneficial in flood-prone and resource-limited contexts.
By mapping historical hotspots and past flooding events using a massive collection of archived satellite imagery, insights from SatGPT help inform the allocation of disaster risk reduction investments to where they are needed most, reducing both human and economic losses. SatGPT contributes to the implementation of the four pillars of the Early Warnings for All Initiative by enhancing disaster risk knowledge and providing historical flooding data.
It can also contribute to improved forecasting models, strengthen early warning analysis, and inform preparedness and response strategies. SatGPT and other technological advancements open an opportunity to deliver risk information that is consistent, accessible, comparable, and open-source, enabling evidence-based disaster risk reduction investment decisions.
Country-specific initiatives further demonstrate the value of Earth observation data and digital innovations. For example, the Philippine Space Agency Integrated Network for Space-Enabled Actions towards Sustainability (PINAS) builds a community empowered by space data, connecting citizens, public, and private sectors to work together toward improved disaster response and sustainable development.
Indonesia is developing an AI project on flood mapping with pilot sites in Jakarta and North Java Island, and SatGPT is planned to be integrated into this platform. Thailand is developing the Check Nahm (Check Flood) flood warning application that consolidates data from various sources, including CCTV cameras, to enhance early warning systems, provide near real-time updates on the flood situation, and forecasts.
The application’s cloud-based data integration can also incorporate SatGPT’s historical mapping capabilities.