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The Conversation
The Conversation
Robin R. Murphy, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University

Why drones and AI can’t quickly find missing flood victims, yet

Flood Drone GPS National Science Foundation
The landscape in the aftermath of a flood makes it challenging to spot victims. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

For search and rescue, AI is not more accurate than humans, but it is far faster.

Recent successes in applying computer vision and machine learning to drone imagery for rapidly determining building and road damage after hurricanes or shifting wildfire lines suggest that artificial intelligence could be valuable in searching for missing persons after a flood.

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