UF’s Xilei Zhao is collaborating to create an AI framework for wildfire evacuation simulations that incorporates psychological theory-informed large language models to improve behavioral realism, prediction accuracy, and decision-making support. Goals include generating a realistic synthetic population for a training simulation platform plus open-access tools for public safety officials.

“There is a critical need for simulation models that can realistically capture how civilians, incident commanders and public safety officials make protective decisions during wildfires,” says Zhao. “We envision this tool being used during planning so emergency managers can test different kinds of scenarios to determine how to draw the evacuation zones, where to issue the orders first and how to design the communications messaging.”

• Xilei Zhao