The Center for Disaster Resilient Communities announced today a free, in person workshop taking place December 8 and 9, 2025, that is focused on training University of Washington researchers who have little to no background in artificial intelligence (AI). Through an inquiry-based learning approach, participants will learn how to harness the power of AI for their disaster resilience projects, such as hazard characterization, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
Date, time and location
Day 1: Monday, December 8, 2025, 8:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Day 2: Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 8:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Location: UW’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health
Learning objectives
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Evaluate benefits, costs and risks of using AI for their disaster resilience projects
- Identify appropriate AI methods to use in their disaster resilience projects
- Develop a plan for using AI for their disaster resilience projects
Topics
Through an inquiry-based learning approach, participants will actively explore the following topics and more during the workshop:
Day 1: Common use cases of AI for disaster resilience projects using data in:
- Spreadsheets (e.g., inventory of buildings and bridges, mobility, census)
- Image/video (e.g., satellite, street view)
- Text (e.g., after-action reports, interview transcripts)
Day 2: Benefits, costs and risks of and how to use:
- Machine learning (e.g., pattern recognition, prediction)
- Computer vision (e.g., image classification, object detection, image segmentation)
- Large language models (e.g., summarization, thematic analysis)
Meet the instructor
John Y. Choe, Ph.D., serves as the deputy director of the CDRC, director of the Disaster Data Science Lab and associate professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Washington. He served as the AI/data science lead for various disaster resilience research and education projects sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Transportation and other public and private sector organizations.
Application process
- Eligibility: UW Principal Investigator (PI) or their delegate (e.g., graduate student, research staff). Those without a PI’s endorsement are ineligible at this time.
- Application deadline: November 10 (Mon), 2025.
- Application form: https://forms.gle/ca36kaNDMvZmdFK99
- Application material: Statement of interest (up to 1,000 characters; approx. 140 words or fewer) to briefly describe how you would like to use the lessons from this workshop.
- Review criterion: Demonstrated potential to maximally leverage this workshop to advance disaster resilience.
- Decision notification: November 17 (Mon), 2025.
Workshop-related inquiries
Please email both our staff member, Theresa Sabala (tsabala@uw.edu), and the instructor, John Choe (ychoe@uw.edu), with any workshop-related inquiries.