Disaster Emergency Decision Making System

Bohan Chen

Disaster Emergency Decision-Making System (D.E.D.M) aims to research and explore how to design artificial intelligence applications for natural disaster response, address challenges and pain points that first responders are currently facing after natural disasters happen, especially to solve the limited and unreliable technology they use in the current system. Additionally, first responders face challenges in-disaster situations with communication, information transparency, decision making conflict, and relief resources distribution. These difficulties cause loss of rescue time that results in delayed disaster area recovery and more casualties. The process used in this investigation is a design thinking approach that allows designers to learn and understand problems to create solutions -- in this case user-centered design applications for first responders. Methods utilized for this investigation include cross-demographic interviews, surveys, analysis of documented in-situ disaster response problems, ideation, prototyping, and user-testing. The final design prototype demonstrates how to integrate various AI technologies to help first responders at each stage of the mission, and show future designers the possibilities of design that leverages artificial intelligence to solve existing problems experienced in disaster response.


About
Bohan Chen is a UX/UI and Interaction Designer who aims to solve problems in the real world. He previously designed for IBM, IBM Research - AI Horizons Network, United Airlines, Creative Alliance, Maryland Institute College of Art, and others. He is currently volunteering for #fightpandemic community. He is also a Design Thinking Co-Creator who organized multiple Design Thinking and Inclusive Design workshops for Parsons undergraduates students.
Bohan Chen is a UX/UI and Interaction Designer who aims to solve problems in the real world. He previously designed for IBM, IBM Research - AI Horizons Network, United Airlines, Creative Alliance, Maryland Institute College of Art, and others. He is currently volunteering for #fightpandemic community. He is also a Design Thinking Co-Creator who organized multiple Design Thinking and Inclusive Design workshops for Parsons undergraduates students.
Thesis Faculty
Thesis 1: Brad Macdonald & Chris Prentice
Thesis 2: Harpreet Sareen & Loretta Wolozin

Special Thanks to:
John Walicki, Venus Chai, Steven Chiang, Captain Yang, Dr.Robin Murphy for all the interviews, inspirations, feedback, and expert reviews.
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