China enhances emergency management with digital tools

Digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and drones are increasingly integrated into China's emergency management system to identify risks earlier, support faster decision-making, and improve disaster response, frontline officials said at a group interview held by the State Council Information Office on Monday.

From flood control in Tianjin to safety supervision in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, local authorities are transforming years of frontline experience into digital tools that monitor risks, issue early warnings, and support emergency coordination.

Zhang Dongfang, director of the Emergency Management Affairs Center of the Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Emergency Management, shared that his team spent two years identifying 1,415 high-risk flood-control sites across the city, incorporating them into an intelligent management platform.

This system integrates information on river flooding, urban waterlogging, storm surges, and mountain torrents, consolidating monitoring data, emergency resources, personnel responsibilities, and response plans into a single platform. It can automatically issue alerts when rainfall, river levels, or water accumulation at sunken roads and bridges reach specified thresholds, notifying commanders, duty officers, and personnel responsible for high-risk sites.

When flooding hit the Juhe River in Tianjin in 2025, authorities used the platform alongside drones, satellite phones, and other communication equipment to monitor upstream rainfall and flood conditions, allowing for the preemptive evacuation of residents from threatened areas.

"Prevention is at the core of flood control," Zhang emphasized, noting that technology can transform accumulated emergency response experience into systematic and visualized tools for broader application.

Similar technologies are being applied to daily safety management in Yiwu, a major trading hub with over 1.3 million registered business entities. Wu Juliang, deputy director of the Yiwu Emergency Management Bureau, highlighted the city's digital supervision platform, known as the "Yiwu safety brain," which now covers around 220,000 businesses, high-rise buildings, and other sites. An AI-powered application can identify unsafe operations in confined spaces and issue real-time warnings, reducing related violations by more than 70 percent. The city has also established a drone unit capable of identifying suspected illegal fuel sites and collecting evidence within five minutes on average.

Frontline officials expressed hope that more AI applications and new technologies will be deployed during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) to enhance the efficiency and precision of grassroots emergency management, strengthen risk prevention, and equip frontline personnel with better tools to navigate increasingly complex safety challenges.