Super Fund Centre Director Dr. Ivan Russin and Deputy Director Dr. Wiesuechu
College of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
Researchers at the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center are investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for community engagement. They have created prototypes for AI chatbots called MyeCoreporter to report environmental concerns, making it easier for individuals and community organizations to alert authorities about potential dangers.
“The Super Fund Centre focuses on developing tools and models to combat chemical pollution after a disaster and developing affected communities,” said Dr. Weihsueh Chiu, Associate Director of the Center and professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
“Many of the communities we work with are close to industrial facilities where there may be accidents or unintended chemical releases, especially during or after a natural disaster,” he said. “However, it’s difficult for a typical community member to navigate the website and find web forms and phone numbers. Most people are very comfortable texting, so we decided to combine it with AI to test new ways of reporting.”
The chatbot is currently only in the prototype phase, but its developers hope that the agency will see its value and decide to create its own, fully functional version.
In the article Recently released In the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, researchers explain the development of MyeCoreporter. It aims to simplify the reporting process by acting as a “intermediary” for the public.
“We thought that if a chatbot could collect data in a conversational way through text messaging, the bot could package that information and send it to the appropriate authorities,” Chiu said.
Chiu and the other teams considered the fact that people don’t always have a positive relationship with talking to bots when they work on developing tools.
“We didn’t want to replicate the type of negative experience that most people have when calling pharmacies or airlines that use voice chatbots,” he said. “We conducted many extensive testing to ensure that we focused on gathering the information we needed to fill out the form. We tested four different government forms just to feel there are challenges in putting this together.”
After the chatbot was developed, the team asked students, faculty and community members to report and test pretend hazards.
“We then showed it to various state and county officials, as well as the state risk assessors forum,” Chiu said. “We have received a lot of positive feedback about this idea and hope that the authorities will decide to use it in the near future.
“Thankfully, it doesn’t cost millions of dollars. It’s just an intermediary system for the information that agencies want to collect anyway, and a way to make reporting more accessible,” he said.
The project also featured Texas A&M faculty from the Faculty of Public Health.
