AI as Critical Infrastructure: The Next American Lifeline

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming an essential component of America’s emergency management systems. As communities face increasingly complex disasters, from severe floods to widespread infrastructure failures, integrating advanced technologies into crisis response is no longer optional. AI is quickly proving to be a critical lifeline, capable of transforming overwhelming environmental data into actionable, life-saving insights for decision-makers and the public alike. 

At the U.S. Chamber Foundation's annual Building Resilience conference, Drenan Dudley, head of state and local government partnerships at Zscaler, led a targeted discussion with Josh Mahan, senior director at Xylem; Victoria Baxter, head of climate and crisis response at Google; and Jeremy Greenberg, senior advisor at Aspen Digital exploring AI’s practical applications in emergency response. 

Moving Beyond the Buzzword 

Dudley opened the session by highlighting how quickly the technology has permeated daily operations across industries. “It is no longer a curiosity topic,” Dudley noted. “AI is used as a tool regularly, multiple times a day across all sectors, and we're all influenced by it whether we wanted it or not.” 

For emergency management, this shift means utilizing a broad spectrum of capabilities. Greenberg explained that true community resilience relies on far more than just popular generative text tools. 

“As a default, most people when you say AI, they think about large language models,” Greenberg said. “The whole suite of AI capabilities, from predictive analytics, to computer vision, all of that can be used to make us a more resilient nation... It is literally saving lives by getting data to decision-makers faster in a way that we had not really contemplated.” 

Bridging Critical Data Gaps 

A major focus of the discussion centered on how AI synthesizes massive datasets to predict and track environmental hazards. Baxter emphasized the necessity of getting this early-warning information to the public efficiently. 

Baxter noted that during a crisis, information can be the difference between safety and harm. She pointed to a striking gap: most rivers around the world have no monitoring systems at all, leaving communities without reliable flood data. AI-powered forecasting tools, as Baxter described, can help fill that gap by delivering accurate, localized flood alerts to the people who need them most. 

Mahan added that AI works best as part of the systems communities already rely on. At Xylem, he noted, that means using predictive technology to catch problems before they become emergencies, protecting water systems and reducing costs in the process. 

Despite the promise of AI, however, panelists agreed that human judgment remains essential, and that the strongest resilience strategies are those that pair smart technology with the people who know how to use it.