As AI continues to advance, what role can it play in real-time catastrophe response?

Adverse climate and weather events are growing in both frequency and intensity. Roughly 80 percent of the 9,000-plus natural disasters recorded by EM-DAT since 1900 have occurred in the past three decades – and hybrid, human-induced crises are rising, too. From infrastructure failures to pandemics, terrorism, and geopolitical conflict, we’re increasingly seeing communities devastated and essential systems paralysed with frightening speed.  

Today’s fusion of advanced satellite and aerial data with artificial intelligence provides a much-needed lifeline. Days of manual image sweeping have been replaced by seconds of automated analysis, with AI accelerating event detection, catalysing rescue efforts, and ensuring aid is targeted precisely, in real time. It’s a nexus that replaces slow, error-prone processes with the immediacy modern catastrophes demand.  

Three-sixty(five) vision 

Satellites have long been panoptic, offering critical visibility of Earth’s struggles even when floods, fires, or conflicts make ground access impossible. Whether a bridge has collapsed or towns have been cut off, our ‘eyes in the sky’ alert us to danger and generate awareness through imagery and data unavailable via other methods.  

Electro-Optical (EO) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems often work together – the former providing clear, high-res imagery in daylight as the latter penetrates cloud, smoke, and darkness for continuous, 24/7 visibility.  

Meanwhile, ultra-high-definition aerial imagery captured by providers like EagleView at resolutions as fine as one inch (2.5 cm) provide forensic-level overhead and oblique views of minute structural and environmental warning signs. Feeding all this multimodal data combined into AI models trained to interpret rapidly, detect anomalies, map risks, and sound the alarm in almost real time gives analysts unprecedented clarity. With catastrophe exposure rising exponentially, it’s a nexus that’s become truly indispensable.  

Processing in orbit 

The lag between image capture and analysis was once a major barrier. Satellites had to downlink raw images for Earth-based processing, with latency losing precious hours. Edge AI has since made it possible for the same data to be processed and filtered in orbit, however, with only actionable insights transmitted to human teams for more immediate, targeted catastrophe response.  

The European Space Agency’s Ciseres project uses onboard AI to analyse imagery in real time, reducing bandwidth and facilitating informed decision-making even when terrestrial networks have failed, for instance. By merging satellite intelligence with machine learning, we’ve effectively created active, intelligent partners in disaster response – and collaborations are only getting better.  

Current benefits and impacts 

Already underpinning emergency logistics, resource routing, and evacuation planning, AI-enabled satellites now bring sensor data, emergency calls, and live imagery together to generate crisis heat maps in just minutes. What once took days or hours can now be actioned almost instantly as a result, allowing humanitarian agencies, governments, and private firms to move from reactive recovery to proactive resilience.  

Public authorities can now identify vulnerable infrastructure, prioritise rescue routes, and direct aid and medical support with unprecedented accuracy. Meanwhile, businesses benefit from early warning of supply chain disruptions and asset risks, as farmers and energy providers use the same models to monitor drought, pollution, and depletion of resources. This protects communities and saves lives. Indeed, in every sense, the merging of satellite and AI technologies is a global resilience network in motion.  

Rewriting catastrophe 

Few sectors stand more to gain here than insurance. Global crisis losses reached US $318 billion in 2024 – yet only $137 billion were covered, leaving a protection gap of approximately $181 billion, according to Swiss Re. For natural disasters, Willis Towers Watson estimates that 60 percent of global losses remain uninsured, with The Geneva Association placing this figure at above 95 percent in lower-income countries.  

Such gaps persist because of outdated risk models, slow claims processes, and limited access to affordable coverage. But advancements in AI-satellite intelligence are now offering an unprecedented opportunity to close that breach.  

By providing ultra-high-resolution geospatial exposures, pinpointing assets in danger zones, and analysing millions of post-event images in seconds, AI is allowing insurers to act with pioneering speed and accuracy. Automated damage-detection models triage claims at scale, verifying policy conditions almost instantly, as human teams engage strategically, informed by continuous data feeds that refine their catastrophe models dynamically. Thanks to AI use aboard satellites, insurance need no longer be historically predictive or retrospective.  

From gaps to growth 

This new era of insight tackles one of the insurance industry’s biggest hurdles: limited data in emerging markets. AI can infer building materials, land use, and vulnerability from satellite imagery, making it possible to underwrite risk, even where formal records are incomplete.  

Parametric insurance – where payouts are triggered by measurable events like rainfall or wind speed – can now be powered by satellite-derived metrics, too, ensuring faster, fairer, more transparent settlements. As risk becomes better understood and more accurately priced as a result, insurers can safely write more affordable contracts, extending coverage to previously underserved communities. Greater pooling, wider coverage, and more equitable protection are thus among the most tangible benefits of advancing AI-satellite convergence.  

The future of adaptive intelligence 

As the protection gap narrows, the next frontier is not just responding faster to disaster, but predicting, preventing, and reducing impact before catastrophes can happen.  

The datasets training modern AI models are expanding exponentially, allowing governments, businesses, and aid agencies to anticipate disruption more clearly than ever before. No longer basing predictions on historical data but instead acting on a wealth of real-time insights greater than any human mind could ever process, they can now step in before crisis takes hold, evacuating vulnerable populations ahead of major storms, for example. As technologies mature, these predictive capabilities will shift even further away from the descriptive (what’s already happened) to prescriptive (what to do next). Predictive mapping will highlight where hospitals or evacuation routes could be cut off, for instance, allowing for pre-emptive reinforcement – and secondary impacts like power outages, water contamination, and population displacement can be safely planned for ahead of time, as AI uses growing capabilities to simulate probable disasters. 

The same constellations that can support insurers and emergency teams will soon inform urban planners, engineers, and climate-adaptation specialists, too, allowing us to build more prepared, resilient societies.  

Seeing the unseen 

Extending beyond known hazards, AI’s analytical reach will soon extend to subtle shifts in soil moisture, traffic density, or migration patterns, with machine learning used to reveal the early signs of flooding, infrastructure fatigue, or civil unrest that these might evince. As models learn to interpret our subtle signals faster than we can, they will alert responders via real-time edge inference, allowing humanity to move forward from mere situational awareness towards real situational foresight.  

Building a resilient network 

What began as a tool for faster image processing is fast evolving into a self-improving resilience network – one that learns continuously as it merges diverse data streams for a fuller global picture. Each event refines the model, creating a feedback loop that strengthens itself with every crisis. Insurers update exposure models in near real time, governments refine response protocols, and humanitarian aid organisations adapt dynamically to better serve and save both people and planet as a result. Roads can be cleared before congestion builds, aid can be positioned before crisis, and recovery can begin before claims are filed, for example. 

Beyond saving lives by mitigating direct risks and their aftermaths, the rapid intelligence brought to the satellite and aerial data industry by machine learning will introduce greater global equity if engaged responsibly. Thanks to AI’s unrivalled processing speeds, predictive warning, live insights, and resilience data can be shared with all communities with little labour or cost, ensuring safety is shared, not selective. Safety can be democratised, ensuring we all have the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and survive disaster. 

Reaching this future 

Realising such ambitions will of course demand sustained investment and international cooperation. Underpinned by its scale in computing and venture capital, the United States will likely remain the hub for foundational AI models. Rather than competing unnecessarily, countries like the UK must build on these by maximising their own leadership strengths, transforming world-class research into applied innovation.  

With top universities, deep geospatial expertise, and a thriving R&D network at its disposal, the UK is ideally positioned to develop the applied tools and intellectual property needed to extract maximum benefit from global AI platforms. Backing the transitional layer where research meets implementation now will ensure that catastrophe intelligence systems are more capable, ethical, transparent, and effective in the years to come.  

It’s all about building smarter applications on top of already world-leading AI platforms, to turn satellite and aerial data into maximal foresight and resuscitative action.