Fraunhofer HHI’s Dr. Monique Kuglitsch, Innovation Manager and Chair of the Global Initiative on Resilience to Natural Hazards through AI Solutions, has been featured in TIME Magazine’s Special Edition on Artificial Intelligence – The Promise and the Perils. The piece revisits her earlier appearance in TIME’s November 2023 article, How AI Is Helping Cities Prepare for Natural Disasters (read here).
The feature marks significant international recognition for Fraunhofer HHI’s leadership in applying artificial intelligence to societal challenges, highlighting the global relevance of the Institute’s research.
In the special issue (pages 13–15), Dr. Kuglitsch discusses how artificial intelligence is transforming the way societies prepare for and respond to natural hazards. She explains how the Global Initiative on Resilience to Natural Hazards through AI Solutions – a UN collaboration involving the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Universal Postal Union (UPU), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in collaboration with Fraunhofer HHI – works to ensure that AI technologies are developed and applied reliably and responsibly in disaster management.
“When you’re in a really high-stakes situation, like a disaster, you need to be able to rely on the model output,” says Dr. Kuglitsch in the TIME interview.
The article highlights the Initiative’s efforts to develop best practices and standards for AI that can strengthen local, regional, and global coordination, as well as the systems themselves. It also describes how AI is already being applied worldwide, from identifying disaster-prone regions and improving the accuracy of forecasts, to enabling faster translation of early warnings and guiding emergency relief efforts, citing the MedEWSa project (in which Fraunhofer HHI is involved) as an example.
“What I find exciting is, for one type of hazard, there are so many different ways that AI can be applied, and this creates a lot of opportunities”, says Dr. Kuglitsch.
The next meeting and workshop of the Global Initiative will take place 11–12 December 2025 at the SQUARE Brussels Convention Centre, hosted by the European Commission. The two-day event includes hands-on capacity building on AI applications for disaster resilience and a plenary session reviewing contributions and advancing the Initiative’s deliverables.
Participation is open to all interested stakeholders. Register to attend in person or online here.
The Initiative is always looking for more use cases and experts to contribute to its standards development work. For more information or to contribute to one of the Initiative’s working groups, please contact the ITU Secretariat: TSBFGAI4NDM@itu.int