Dubai: The Director of the General Department of Artificial Intelligence at the General Command of Civil Defence in Dubai, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Issa Ahmed Al Mutawa, revealed that the response time to fire incident reports is currently less than four minutes, compared to a global average of about eight minutes, thanks to the efforts and technologies that are being adopted to reduce the number of fires and protect lives, property and vital systems.He said, on the sidelines of a specialised forum organised by the Federal Authority for Ambulance and Civil Defence, that achieving the current target represents an incentive to move to a new stage of immediate response to accidents.He added that achieving this goal depends on a range of technologies and projects that are currently being tested, including robots, self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence applications, autonomous technologies, innovative solutions for predicting and responding to accidents, and others. He pointed out that these projects are still in the testing phase, and that if they are successful and fully ready, they will be announced during upcoming global conferences and events hosted by the emirate.Dr. Al Mutawa pointed out that the developments and events that the world has witnessed during the recent period, including the conflicts in the region, have shown that a single fire incident can have repercussions that go far beyond its geographical location. He explained that a single incident could paralyse air traffic, or cause a power outage for an entire city if it targeted power stations, or disrupt supply chains. A single fire incident can also affect the mental image of a country or city. He stressed that these data reflect the importance of moving from the concept of dealing with a fire after it occurs to a proactive system that relies on data and artificial intelligence to predict risks and prevent the incident from occurring or reduce its effects before it worsens.He said that the Federal Authority for Ambulance and Civil Defence has been working during the past period on a number of projects that rely on artificial intelligence in predicting and preventing fires. The beginning was with collecting historical data with the aim of analysing it, identifying gaps, and determining critical areas that are most exposed to risks. He explained that the work teams initially believed that collecting data was the most difficult task, but experience proved that maintaining the data and protecting it from cyberattacks represents the most difficult challenge at the present stage.He added that after collecting and analysing the data, generative artificial intelligence models were built, which contributed to a more accurate identification of vital areas in the emirate of Dubai and the UAE, and determining how to properly distribute resources, in addition to identifying areas that need to intensify training, awareness and inspection operations.He pointed out that the availability of data and its in-depth analysis allows for more detailed readings about the regions, including the nature of the demographic composition and the nationalities present in them, the reasons that usually lead to the occurrence of fire incidents, as well as identifying the most effective awareness materials and messages in helping members of the community avoid the causes of those incidents.He stressed that deep and accurate data analysis is not limited to identifying the areas where accidents occurred, but also helps to anticipate places that may witness accidents in the future, determine the nature of risks and their causes, and put in place appropriate preventive interventions before an accident occurs, explaining that all these tools contribute to one goal, which is to reduce fire incidents and protect lives and property.He added that emissions resulting from fire incidents are linked, according to the data the project is working on, to about seven million premature deaths, noting that emissions resulting from fires are about double the emissions resulting from cars, factories, ships and boats combined, at a rate of up to 21%, which reflects the size of the extended environmental impact of fire incidents.
