AI technology and its future role as decision support or virtual team member within the emergency services

This project is part of UKRI funded research (REASON: REsilient Autonomous SOcio-cyber-physical ageNts) to improve the socio-technical resilience and trustworthiness of autonomous systems. This will focus on the emergency services (ES) and the future role of technology/artificial intelligence (AI) as a team member and/or decision support (DS).

Decision making and efficiency are of paramount importance within a critical incident and the use of AI has been shown to improve this within emergency healthcare contexts. There are however barriers to implementation including human resistance. This research aims to find the extent to which decision support tools would be helpful, and the potential difficulties in achieving integration with operational ES staff.

Study 1 will be a systematic literature review to investigate existing literature regarding AI and DS technology within high reliability organisations. This will discover how it has been used, general responses and any documented behavioural changes or acceptance/resistance to the introduction of these technologies, as well as the extent and limitations of technology within this space.

Study 2 will use focus groups and interviews with those working in the ES to gauge their understanding and interest in the use of AI or DS tools. This is important to fully understand the potential engagement with these tools and therefore to aid in designing future training or packages to aid those in operational roles to use DS technology.

Finally, study 3 will use a simulation exercise with commanders in the ES, using DS tools to assess behaviour and the effect that it has on the efficiency and effectiveness on decisions made within a critical incident scenario. This will use themes discovered in studies one and two in order to most effectively introduce these tools to emergency services practitioners. Participants will be evaluated pre- and post- exercise to ascertain their thoughts regarding DS technology at all stages.