Artificial Emergencies to Train Real Heroes: AI Firefighting

A former Viterbi School computer science graduate student now has his PhD, and this thesis project continues in development as a way to train firefighters and other responders to fight conflagrations.

Viterbi School artificial intelligence expert Milind Tambe and Nathan Schurr (PhD 2007) brought the complex system into being; working directly with the L.A. County Fire Department as it evolved, making sure that it remained relevant and useful.

The idea was to speed up and make more useful a training simulation. The LAFD had previously run simulated training drills working by hand, but without sophisticated computer tools provided by Tambe and Schurr in a system dubbed DEFACTO. In one room, a B-team of veteran firefighters would make up a disaster, sending bulletins to another room, where trainees would decide where to send equipment and how to responf. They looked at crude pictures moved models around a map,

The system meant that dozens of top personnel would be tied up for hours. Mobilizing a B-team was such a major organizational effort that it was necessary to bring as many trainees as possible into the response group. There were so many that each individual received little experience. "It's so costly to have large exercises," said LAFD Fire Captain Ron Roemer.

DEFACTO totally changed the situation. The B-Team was completely replaced by Tambe and Schurr's sophisticated artificial intelligence system. Instead of a committee of firefighters, DEFACTO had committees of artificial intelligences, "agents.'"

The agents created disaster scenarios, vivid ones, with images and maps. Individuals or small teams could train on the system,

USC in flames: AI agents create scnearios for conflagrations, then help trainees fight the fictional fires on real city landscapes, such as this view of the University Park campus.

making their own decisions and learning quickly from their own mistakes.