Camera-First Form Filling: Reducing the Friction in Climate Hazard Reporting

Abstract

The effective reporting of climate hazards, such as flash floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, is critical. To quickly and correctly assess the situation and deploy resou rces, emergency services often rely on citizen reports that must be timely, comprehensive, and accurate. The pervasive availability and use of smartphone cameras allow the transmission of dynamic incident information from citizens in near-real-time. While high-quality reporting is beneficial, generating such reports can place an additional burden on citizens who are already suffering from the stress of a climate-related disaster. Furthermore, reporting methods are often challenging to use, due to their length and complexity. In this paper, we explore reducing the friction of climate hazard reporting by automating parts of the form-filling process. By building on existing computer vision and natural language models, we demonstrate the automated generation of a full-form hazard impact assessment report from a single photograph. Our proposed data pipeline can be integrated with existing systems and used with geospatial data solutions, such as flood hazard maps.