Coagency of humans and artificial intelligence in sea rescue environments : A closer look at where artificial intelligence can help humans maintain and improve situational awareness in search and rescue operations

Abstract: This paper aims to answer the question of how artificial intelligence could help humans maintain and/or improve situational awareness in search and rescue operations at sea, as well as where in such processes artificial intelligence could be incorporated to most efficiently compensate for human vulnerabilities and support human strengths. In order to answer this, a joint cognitive system perspective has been adopted whilst joining in search and rescue practice operations. These operations have been observed and persons participating in them have been interviewed, in order to gather insights about the process and the persons conducting it. The results from these insights coupled with experience with artificial intelligence and automation, show that artificial intelligence could help improve and/or maintain situational awareness by adopting functions which take up unnecessary time from man. According to the joint cognitive system view, these functions should never be solely performed by artificial intelligence however, but in coagency with man; allocated functions should overlap between man and machine. Suggestions have been given regarding which functions in particular an artificial intelligent agent could perform in terms of search and rescue and where these functions occur in the process. None of these suggestions are without man involvement, as they should not be. To summarise, these suggestions include; a UAV equipped with an infrared camera to search large areas quickly, a decision support system equipped with image recognition to analyse images gathered from the UAV, as well as a communication tool which allows for shared search patterns and hotspots between search and rescue units.