HAC-ER: A Disaster Response System based on Human-Agent Collectives

Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.; Huynh, Trung Dong; Ikuno, Yuki; Flann, Jack; Wu, Feng; Moreau, Luc; Jennings, Nicholas R.; Fischer, Joel E.; Jiang, Wenchao; Rodden, Tom; Simpson, Edwin; Reece, Steven; Roberts, Stephen

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel disaster management system called HAC-ER that addresses some of the challenges faced by emergency responders by enabling humans and agents, using state-of-the-art algorithms, to collaboratively plan and carry out tasks in teams referred to as human-agent collectives. In particular, HAC-ER utilises crowdsourcing combined with machine learning to extract situational awareness information from large streams of reports posted by members of the public and trusted organisations. We then show how this information can inform human-agent teams in coordinating multi-UAV deployments as well as task planning for responders on the ground. Finally, HAC-ER incorporates a tool for tracking and analysing the provenance of information shared across the entire system. In summary, this paper describes a prototype system, validated by real-world emergency responders, that combines several state-of-the-art techniques for integrating humans and agents, and illustrates, for the first time, how such an approach can enable more effective disaster response operations.

Citation

Ramchurn, S. D., Huynh, T. D., Ikuno, Y., Flann, J., Wu, F., Moreau, L., …Roberts, S. (2015). HAC-ER: A Disaster Response System based on Human-Agent Collectives. In AAMAS '15: Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (533-541)

• Presentation Conference Type: Edited Proceedings
• Conference Name: 2015 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
• Start Date: May 4, 2015
• End Date: May 8, 2015
• Online Publication Date: May 4, 2015
• Publication Date: May 4, 2015
• Deposit Date: Oct 1, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 1, 2015
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2015-May
• Pages: 533-541
• Book Title: AAMAS '15: Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
• ISBN: 9781450334136
• Keywords: Disaster response, Human and agents, Innovative applications
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/992893
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2772879.2772947
• Additional Information: Published in: Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. ACM, 2015, ISBN 9781450334136.