Auburn receives $653,000 to help prioritize disaster-response data with AI

Auburn University has received a three-year, $653,000 National Science Foundation award to help critical information reach first responders over limited disaster-zone networks. Announced by Auburn on October 19, the work is part of a $4.8 million, Purdue-led project combining AI, wireless communications and decision support—not a system already deployed in emergencies.

The project, Heterogeneous Edge Intelligence for Disaster Response Analytics, or HEIDRA, brings together AI, wireless communications and emergency management. Auburn researchers Yin Sun, Shiwen Mao and David Roueche will contribute networking research and disaster-response expertise. The award supports Auburn’s portion of the broader collaboration, rather than providing the full $4.8 million to the university.

Getting the right information through

Sun, a project co-principal investigator and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, describes a problem with two sides. First responders can face overwhelming amounts of information while the communications needed to deliver it are limited or unreliable. Time adds another constraint: information must arrive while it still has operational value.

His work will develop importance-based, task-oriented networking—technology intended to give mission-critical information priority. The objective is to identify what responders need within a larger stream of data and deliver it despite constraints on power and wireless spectrum, the radio capacity available for communications. That makes selecting information part of the networking research, alongside transmitting it.

Because disaster response is highly time-sensitive, critical information must be collected, processed and delivered to first responders while it can provide the greatest operational value.

Yin Sun, HEIDRA co-principal investigator

AI recommendations, with responders in control

HEIDRA’s technical agenda connects three areas rather than treating AI and communications as separate systems. Its planned work covers:

• Distributed AI systems that work across different kinds of devices used in the field.
• Networking technologies that identify and transmit the most critical information.
• Responder-in-the-loop decision-making, allowing emergency personnel to assess and override AI-generated recommendations when necessary.

Sun will also work with collaborators from Purdue, the University of Virginia, Saab and Nokia on an edge-intelligence system. That work brings AI processing to field devices, with the goal of collecting high-priority information and supporting real-time processing and decisions. The collaboration therefore spans both the information moving through the network and the processing that makes it useful.

From communications research to disaster exercises

Mao, an electrical and computer engineering professor who directs Auburn’s Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center, will lead energy-efficient communications research. His contribution also includes applying AI to how devices share information and coordinate during disaster response. This addresses the connectivity side of the effort, alongside Sun’s focus on prioritizing information.

Roueche, a civil and environmental engineering associate professor whose expertise includes designing structures to withstand storm damage, will serve on HEIDRA’s disaster response and stakeholder advisory board. His role brings structural-hazard expertise into a project whose other Auburn contributions center on communications and AI.

The project will progress through increasingly complex demonstrations, culminating in field exercises at the Indiana National Guard’s Training Center in Muscatatuck, Indiana. The 1,000-acre site replicates a range of disaster scenarios, giving researchers a setting to evaluate the technology under development. Those exercises are planned tests of the proposed approach, not evidence of performance already achieved.