ALIGNING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DESIGN THEORY FOR SUPPORTING THOSE IN A REMOTE WORKPLACE TO SURVIVE NATURAL DISASTERS.

• Author: Morrison, James L.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last several months of 2020, the United States (U.S.) has struggled through continuous threats during an exceptionally dangerous hurricane and wildfire season. Recently, hurricanes Sally, Laura and Delta have stricken the Louisiana-Florida Gulf Coast with relentless rain and flooding, causing widespread damage. In addition, fires raging up and down the West Coast of the United States have burned millions of acres of land and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. The devastation has been remarkable in terms of not on critical infrastructure such as electrical grids, telecommunication towers and forests, but the lives of thousands of citizens living in those regions.

Combining the effects of COVID19 with those of the increasing number of natural disasters this past year, the traditional workplace found in our large commercial centers has become a 'disaster zone of itself.' As a result of such devastation from these natural causes, the future of the centralized workplace is part of an intriguing debate among social entrepreneurs, government officials and academic scientists, among others. Working remotely is now more commonplace as institutions attempt to continue daily operations with limited interruption. The research question is how should those in senior leadership position not only engage but inspire those in a remote workplace to become part of the discourse when planning to survive an unexpected natural disaster?

In this regard, in the past, the focus by senior executives has been primarily on protecting their data systems and infrastructure to ensure organizational survival and sustainability. The approach has been basically a top-down planning process whereby those in senior rank mobilize resources for designing such a strategy. This generally entails connecting with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other state and local agencies to meet both Federal and local expectations as the planning process is conducted (Trainor & Subbio, 2014). The result has been a short-term strategy that targets getting back to normal operations as quickly as possible.

However, this strategy has been adopted when the workforce was also centralized where face-to-face communication was commonplace. Connecting with individuals throughout the management staff and operational levels was readily available. However, with many members of the workforce currently working at home or in another isolated working environment of their choice, does such a top-down, centralized strategy still make sense? The issue is that those in a remote workplace have families, residences, and equipment (laptops, etc.) that are also at risk during a natural disaster. Their capacity to rebound from a natural disaster is perhaps even more critical today since their ability to perform operational tasks from home is also destroyed. An outcome of this theoretical study is a revolutionary planning model for generating not only greater input from those to be most affected by a natural disaster (a remote workforce) but also a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose reflecting an organization's values and purpose.

Planning in a remote work culture that has employees somewhat isolated from their peers has significant consequences as to not only how natural disaster preparedness practices are designed but also how they are implemented. In an era where we are being asked to challenge the way we think and go about redesigning past strategies for addressing societal issues in general, organizational leaders also need to possibly rethink their past approaches as to how to address employee networking, job security and safety in a remote workspace. In terms of the growing frequency of natural disasters, the health and welfare of remote co-workers adds another intriguing dimension to the discourse. The objective of this theoretical piece is to identify a different and more inclusive approach to how organizational leaders in the private sector go about in designing a safety net for assisting isolated remote co-workers (and their families, etc.) survive a natural disaster.

While preventing natural disasters from occurring is out of the reach of human beings, protecting a remote workforce adds a new dimension to planning. Moreover, despite of what we have learned from past natural disasters, there is much that remains to be done to minimize the destruction to our infrastructure and buildings--and the corresponding loss of lives. Artificial intelligence is one option that can help us design strategies to prevent massive loss of lives. In this regard, a complementary objective to this theoretical study is to determine whether the reliance upon artificial intelligence is the best strategy to primarily depend upon when designing future approaches for generating natural disaster preparedness plans.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the United States, during the combination of CoVID19 and the accompanying natural disasters, approximately 25+ million Americans have joined the unemployed ranks since February 2020 (Covington, 2020). In addition to COVID19 having impact upon our health as a nation, the major wildfires in at least 5 western states (Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Colorado) and the accompanying excessive heat wave came into play as in-work face-to-face operations in large numbers of businesses have been devastated. If it is not a tornado in the Midwest, it is a hurricane in the Southeast. If is not a flood along one of our major rivers, it is a drenching rain along the East Coast.

Over the past several decades, artificial intelligence has emerged as an intriguing component to disaster management. Artificial Intelligence consists of utilizing highly sophisticated algorithms to replicate the capacity of the human mind for solving problems. Of note here is the use of artificial intelligence in a global positioning system (GPS) now installed in our cell phones, smartphones, watches, and automobiles (Eastern Kentucky University, 2015).

What is intriguing about GPS is its capacity to determine the position of any weather occurrence globally. Tracking hurricanes and paths of tornadoes is now commonplace. For example, drones and electronic sensors now provide accurate information concerning damage to landscapes as well as buildings (Eastern Kentucky University, 2015). But in terms of another blow to relying upon individuals situated in a conventional centralized workplace for getting things done, technology via application of algorithms has the power to remove human input almost entirely as a significant source for information when planning solutions.

In addition to the emergence of artificial intelligence as a planning tool, engaging coworkers in remote workplaces to provide input into mitigating the effects of a natural disaster (whether an organization in the public, private or public sector) has become an intriguing challenge for today's leaders. Working in a somewhat distant environment where the direct onsite support and communication is eliminated creates the need for new planning strategies.

According to Lumen (2020), gaining input from co-workers where they feel part of something special requires insightful and thoughtful action on the part of organizational leaders. In this regard, attaining co-worker engagement means understanding the impact that remote work has upon employee's daily lives, where caring for loved ones and helping their children learn remotely are also new challenges. Now, for the health of an entire nation, organizational leaders may need to be more sensitive to what situations remote workers are in (while attempting to meet expanded commitments both at home and at work) than merely focusing on the capacity of technology to replace their role entirely in the...