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Rethinking Emergency Preparedness: Innovations Shaping Resilience

Feb 2015 min read

Updated: Mar 14

Green tactical medical pouch with a cross symbol, black tape attached, on a patterned green background, conveying readiness.
Source: Dan Galvani Sommavilla via pexels.com

We’ve all heard about go bags and emergency kits, but in a rapidly changing world, are they enough to keep us safe? In this episode, we explore how emergency preparedness is evolving beyond outdated survival kits. From self-driving evacuation vehicles to drone-powered disaster response, we look at the technologies transforming resilience. We discuss AI risk models for personal preparedness, cybersecurity threats during crises, and the role of digital identity in emergency planning. Plus, we highlight global innovations like Singapore’s networked preparedness model and Denmark’s cybersecurity initiatives. Whether you're planning for climate disasters or digital warfare, these emerging signals redefine what it truly means to be prepared.





Selected Links:





  • S. Chakraborty, E. M. Mombeshora, K. P. Clark and T. S. Mbavarira, "Understanding of Cyber-Attack Vulnerabilities During Natural Disasters and Discussing A Cyber-Attack Resiliency Framework," SoutheastCon 2024, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10500233






Episode Transcript:

Lana: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.


[0:37 Emergency Preparedness Needs an Overhaul]


Lana: Hello and welcome to Signal Shift. Sue is away this week and Raakhee and I have a special episode in store for you. 


With the very recent wildfires in LA, a lot of people are thinking about emergency preparedness. And when we think about emergency preparedness, we often think of emergency kits, like go bags, which are designed to provide essential supplies during a crisis. 


Let me share the bad news with you up front. Emergency kits are, as we traditionally think of them, are pretty outdated and largely ineffective, which surprised me, too. 


But the good news is that today we're gonna step back and explore a bigger, more expansive way to think about this. We're trying a new format, which is rapid fire signals. 


And so we'll break down how the current model of emergency preparedness is a bit outdated and what could be replacing it. And most importantly, what lessons and assets are still valuable as we actively move into the future. So let's get into it. Raakhee, what's your first signal related to emergency preparedness? 


[01:56 Self-Driving Shuttles for Evacuations]


Raakhee: Ooh, yeah, I think it's one we may not think of when we think of emergency kit, but what's the biggest part of your emergency kit? It's actually your car. If you can't get into that and drive off, then really where do you stand, right? So stick with me here. 


This is an obvious signal, right? Which is self-driving vehicles. We all know this one. Specifically those shuttles and buses which are becoming common and being tested in a lot of cities, particularly in like Milton Keynes in the UK, they've got one called StreetCAV and it's a shuttle and if it goes well in the next few months, they are going to start rolling this out in the city. 


So the reality of these self-driving shuttles and vehicles is pretty much upon us. But it really got me thinking about this emergency, this massive part of our emergency kit, right? 


People in the Palisades fire had to leave their cars and literally start running because the cars became really an issue in terms of getting out, right? So each person in each family leaving singularly in their car just doesn't make sense. Sometimes you could be in areas where you are shut off and the roads are closed off because of whatever's happened. 


So self-driving vehicles, particularly these big ones like shuttles, they’re organized, they're efficient. They have all the routes and the maps. They can go quickly from one place to the next, right? It's constant comms with authorities. There's data that can be shared. They can also navigate through hazardous conditions like if there's a fire burning around, those vehicles could be built to really withstand that much more better, right? Including rainy terrain, those sorts of things. 


So it's going to be really useful to evacuate individuals from affected areas, with a lot of minimal risk and a lot of speed and efficiency than the human way of us getting in our cars and moving. So I think that may be a part of the future. 


The public charity group IEEE is one of the largest technical professional organizations and they have a public safety technology initiative and this is one of the projects that they're looking at underneath that banner, is saying how can self-driving vehicles help us in these sorts of situations. 


Now, I will just mention that there's the flip side of this, where if there's digital warfare, then there was a Julia Roberts end of world movie where there's digital warfare. You could literally get all these Teslas are like hacked in this movie and actually it went inefficiently. So, truly acknowledge that there is that side of it. So it depends on what kind of situation you're looking at. But talk about technology being really useful. And this is one of them. So that's the first one. 


[04:30 Moving from Individual to Networked Preparedness]


Lana: That's a really good one. I have like three that could go with that, but I think I'll respond to what you were saying about sort of everyone singularly getting in their cars and then clogging up the road. 


So, in the beginning when I said, there's why emergency kits sort of don't work, I think one big underlying problem is the mindset, right? So traditionally, this has been really framed as an individual responsibility. Like you must create your own plan. You must assemble your own supplies. Your survival is up to you. And so, you know, this, it's inequitable, right? It's, there's a failure in execution and that's not scalable, right? And it doesn't, it doesn't really work that way. 


And so, you know, I think, I really appreciate your example, because I think it speaks to this, you know, the mindset that we're moving to is about networked preparedness, right, like coordination among, you know, communities, among first responder agencies, government, organizations. And so, you know, I think that even calling that out, I think is really important. 


One thing that I found was Singapore is really ahead of the game on this in terms of their preparedness, emergency preparedness. And, you know, they have, they are in a 10-year plan to build, they call it a nation of lifesavers. And so they are kind of really activating all their citizens to become engaged emergency responders. 


And so, you know, very comprehensive training that starts from when you're very young, like all through different steps in school and as adults. And, you know, coordinating between citizens and first responders because they realized in their society, you know, as an island, they have specific and different potential risks. 


They have an aging society, and they just do not have enough, you know, in terms of the scale of their operations, their emergency services, they realize that they can't possibly cover all the risks and all of the people that they need to. And so they need to like engage the citizens to also actively coordinate. 


[07:23 Drones in Disaster Response]


Raakhee: Yeah, absolutely. love that, right? Network preparedness. That's a big word, I think, to take out of this. And then the other thing you spoke about there was kind of skills building, right? And the skills we should build. 


And so I think my second signal kind of sits in that realm of skills building. And we'll get there in a second, but let's start off with drones. So again, I know very obvious on the surface. But drones can be really, really useful during these situations. 


One signal was drones were used to provide aid to victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. It was actually the owner of an agri-tech company, so a private individual. He had a team of volunteers who knew how to fly drones and they delivered food and medicine to people who couldn't be reached in a mountainous area, about 100 people. These guys stepped in to help them. I think it's pretty amazing. 


And then there was another signal I saw which was pretty interesting, which was hikers exploring the Great Wall of China, and a food delivery company is now delivering both food and medicine to the Great Wall of China to hikers out there. So if you get stranded on a hike like that, there you go, a drone becomes really useful as well to deliver things to people in those situations. 


So I think that drones are going to be really important in these sorts of emergency relief situations and efforts. Sometimes, you know, access to roads are just going to be shut off and drones are going to be lifesavers in these instances. 


So what we do actually need is we need more people who know how to operate drones. And that's where the skills building comes in. So you might not have thought about it, but learning how to fly a drone might actually need to be part of your skill set for your emergency kit. 


I will share a big caveat here on the flip side. I'm trying to do the flip side with each of these signals as well, right? And the flip side is that, know, Lana, you spoke about this before on the busy skies and too much in the sky. 


So I want to absolutely be realistic about how many drones can be up there. With the Palisades fire, there was an individual who was flying his personal drone to get a sense of what was happening and crashed into one of the water bearing planes and grounded that, only hurting relief efforts. He was really sincere. He came out. They know who he is. I don't know what's going to happen in terms of is he fined? How does that work? 


But again, just a caveat around have the skill set. But exactly like you said, network preparedness. We need to work in coordinated fashions with authorities in our communities, not just kind of go off on our own. So just keep that in mind. But yeah, I think flying drones. 


[11:29 Cybersecurity Preparedness]


Lana: Yeah, that's a great, those are some really great examples. And I really appreciate how you brought in that, that last point about how we do really need to coordinate. 


Yeah, I guess one thing that I saw that I'll say is in the individualist mindset, but I hope could be adapted to more in the theme of what we're talking about is, I just saw this. 


It is a signal for an apocalypse vehicle. It is extremely expensive. It's like a quarter of a million dollars. And it basically like looks like a tank. And it has like gas masks and bulletproof like exterior and also luxury features. And so it's a little, you know, eye roll barf in terms of who they're trying to attract as the core customer. But, to me, it sort of went back to, I was thinking about your first one with the shuttle. It's like, OK, well, we know that there are these certain features we can add to it that can make everyone more safe. And we don't need to spend a quarter of a million dollars on our own personal, like moving bunker, essentially. So that's one. 


I think another one that I wanted to respond to is the digital warfare. And something that I found, which I guess surprised me, but maybe that it shouldn't, is that during times of crisis, cyber attacks really go up, right? Because the criminals, are taking advantage of the situation. 


And so both on the individual level in terms of, know, phishing scams or like, you know, fundraising scams, these kinds of things, but also on a much bigger level, attacks to, you know, public, companies because they're very vulnerable, and to like public structures. 


And so I think one thing that I just saw is you know, Denmark, for example, has started a whole agency just specifically focused on this, which is cyber, increasing cybersecurity and, and, you know, defense to anticipate sort of threats on that front. And, you know, in addition to, or simultaneous with kind of other threats. 


And so I think you know, both at the collective level and the individual level, sort of as we, you know, I think traditionally we think about emergency preparedness very much in terms of our physical body. And of course that's most important. 


But we also, as we have, you know, bigger digital lives, really thinking about like our digital preparedness and what that could mean. And, you know, just being aware, that we’re also potentially very vulnerable. And so I think in the corporate sphere, they're making a lot of, I think there's a big awareness around that, but I think that could also grow for at the individual level as well. 


[15:14 Innovations in Emergency Nutrition]


Raakhee: Yeah, absolutely, Lana. I think that at the same time that we prepare, we have to prepare. I think you mentioned this in a previous conversation we had, but you have to prepare and tailor for different emergencies. And digital warfare is its own type of very different type of warfare. 


And I think we all have to be prepared for kind of off-grid living in some instances or cases. And I think it's why we did the episode on farming and how do we get certain things growing in our own gardens. 


And we didn't talk a lot about going off comms, but learning how to do that as well. We need to both be, I think, highly integrated and also have the ability to know how not to have a dependence on those things, which is, it's really hard to navigate and learn, but I think that's the task of the moment. So yeah, just in response to, you know, what you shared. 


I'll go to the third signal I had from my end, which was around really this whole idea of food in a pill, particularly useful in an emergency situation where you can't really carry along food or you might have only canned food if you're stuck or shut in into your home. 


But thinking of things like protein powder and supplements, we have a lot of things that give us high vitamins and nutrients in small packages now. Still nothing that's close to one pill, but there is one company that is getting the closest we have so far. 


It's known as the Food Pill Diet. It was born out of scientific research conducted at a NASA research base in Mountain View. And basically, you know, they came down to the key finding of when you eliminate taste and smell, you really reduce hunger because your cephalic digestion isn't activated, those regions in your brain are not activated, and you really don't have the experience of hunger. So you eat less and simply what's needed, it takes away that experience of food. 


And so they devised these pills where you know, you're not smelling, you're not tasting food, you just have these pills and they give you all the nutrients and vitamins and all the calories and energy that you need to safely exist in the world without actual food. 


A little sad, but this is for an emergency situation. Now, they are not yet close to that singular pill. I'll tell you that right now on their plan, you have to have six meals a day every two hours and those six meals comprise of 50 pills. So you have to have 300 pills in a day and then still have a like a normal traditional dinner at 7 p.m. you know to meet your calorie intake. 


So I don't know who would opt for this solution but I'm hoping that in the future what we have is something like this that's down to maybe a couple of pills, maybe protein powder or a supplement that in a couple of small things you can get what you need to survive, just for a couple of days. 


This is not the inherent long-term plan. Going back to the episode where we spoke about growing your own veggies and your own herbs, I think that always needs to be a part of the bigger plan, having that in your own home, having that in your community. 


But in an absolute emergency situation, we can't carry our food along, right? And we still want to be nourished and be okay. Or whether you're hiking and you need to carry things like this. I think very exciting for the future. think we'll be able to get closer to maybe not a pill, but a handful and not 300. 


[18:47 Personalized Risk Planning]


Lana: Wow, yeah, I can't, it's hard to imagine going through a regimen like that. But that's really, but I hear you. I think what you're saying is, I mean, we're moving in a direction, right? So it's like that today, but it's not gonna be like that in the future. 

Yeah, so I guess, you know, maybe I'll, I'll wrap up with this last one. But I think, you one of the other things that is inherently, you know, sort of what's, that's traditional that isn't working as well today is kind of this one size fits all, right? 


Back to your point, Raakhee, it's like, what, what emergency are we planning for exactly? And so, you know, the idea that you can buy like an entire go bag, you know, filled with things online, or you can buy these like, kits at Costco, you know, and then they just sort of sit in your, in your basement or, you know, under your bed. 


And so, you know, moving from kind of a static one-size-fits all concept of a physical bag to something that is more dynamic, right, and that's more real, real time, but also personalized to you, right? 


Everyone has a very different risk profile depending on where you live, know, like what your circumstances are, how many people are in your, you know, family, do you live in a rural area, right? All of these things. 


And so, you know, I think this isn't groundbreaking, but, you know, insurance agents, insurance companies, for example, are using predictive AI risk models, right? Like more and more they as the losses from climate change are really mounting. Even between 2022, I think was like $30 billion of claims due to natural disasters. And then the following year it was even higher than that. So, you know, it is in their best interest to try and predict risk and use these different AI models. And so, financial companies, same thing. 


And so I think it doesn't seem like a far leap to say, why can't we all have access to these models to see sort of what are the big risks that we should anticipate? And in real time, how can we best prepare for those. 


And so I think, you know, that also kind of speaks to not just the realities of today, but also how can we use these technologies to really inform and make better decisions, as opposed to what might be the easy thing, which is like, I'm just going to check this off my list and feel like I'm prepared, even though I might not actually be. 


[20:41 Digital Identity and Documentation]


Raakhee: I'll say this. I think this is a very practical thing that people can do now. The truth is we are moving towards digital identity and sort of singular identity. 


If you think about California, right now they're rolling out a pilot called mobile driver's license. So you have a scanned version of your driver's license and that's official. For somebody like me who just carries their phone around, I've been waiting for this. So I'm all on top of that. It just makes it easier for me not to worry about losing my license, right? 


Countries like Estonia have for many years had the EID and they've been leading on the digital identity front. You can pay your bills, you vote, you get prescriptions online. And it seems again, more efficient, more safe, more accurate doing it this way than of course paper. And blockchain and of course biometric data and checks are really critical to that safety, right? But blockchain enables a sort of singular identity and you know, that sort of system. 


And I can imagine the future we'd have one integrated system that has everything related to your identity in one place and ability to get updates from authorities in one place. 


But what that leads me to on the very practical level for the now and this moment and what we should be doing is really this concept of document and digitize everything. So take photos of everything right and get that up on a cloud somewhere. Of course maintain whatever parameters you can for safety. I know that's our other concern. 


But I think about things like, you know, not of course just your official documents, having that, having scanned copies of that's really important, but things like clothes, like say you have a really favorite piece of a jacket or something. Having pictures of that means that if you do lose something like that, you might be able to get another one of it. 


But half of the time, we don't even remember what we have, right? It's almost like an archaic digital twin. Like think of it that way. Like we're creating our own little archaic digital twins that have pictures of everything in our life. Not just the things, of course, the moments. 


Lana: Yeah, thanks for making it practical and grounded sort of in today. 


In my research, I did find an app that I thought was pretty good, today for what we have today versus what we're dreaming about having in the next five to 10 years. It's called Perci, P-E-R-C-I. And you put in your zip code and a couple of things about you and it walks you through all the main components of preparedness. 


And one, to your point, is to document. But then I think what you're speaking to is also that the emotional side, which know, we've been speaking about too, which needs space and a way to address it. 


And so, yeah, obviously there's a lot that we can do that we need to do on this front. And hopefully this discussion has given us some ideas, possibilities, and also some hope that we're in it together. 


So thanks so much, Raakhee. Thanks. We miss Sue, we'll see you soon. And thanks everyone for joining this episode. And as always, if you have any questions, ideas for future topics, we are at horizonshiftlab.com. And we look forward to hearing from you and we'll see you again next week. 


[24:25]

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