Potential of Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Nature-Based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction

In the context of global climate change, the frequency of natural disasters has grown exponentially. Floods, draughts, wildfires, avalanches, hurricanes, tsunami, and other disasters currently threaten livelihoods of people across the globe. Nature-based solutions have been proposed as an effective tools to mitigate many of these disasters. Implementation of the solutions, however, is challenging as they should meet multiple social, ecological, and economic criteria to be justified and obtain public support and funding. Modern digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, can greatly increase the capacity of Nature-based solutions to address multiple challenges simultaneously. Lack of understanding of the potential applications of modern technologies may be among the main factors undermining successful implementation of the solutions and their widespread uptake. Thus, in this paper potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in nature-based solution design are reviewed and practical recommendations for practitioners willing to adapt the technologies are provided.