Russia’s Emergency Ministry Is Testing AI to Help Investigate Fires
A new AI assistant, trained on real fire scenes and inspection reports, is designed to speed up investigations and help experts focus on determining the cause.
Russia’s emergency services are testing an artificial intelligence–based system designed to assist in fire investigations. Specialists from the State Fire Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations are developing the tool together with Yandex, according to Ilya Bershov, an official with the ministry’s fire investigation and administrative practice department, who spoke to Izvestia.
The AI system is currently in a training phase. Developers are feeding it photographs from real fire scenes along with official inspection reports. The algorithm analyzes this data and provides investigators with guidance, highlighting key directions for an inquiry and automating part of the analytical workload.
Speeding Up Fire Investigations
The primary goal of introducing AI is to reduce the time investigators spend on paperwork. Preparing an on-site inspection report after a fire is a labor-intensive process, and that task is now expected to be partially handled by artificial intelligence. The time saved can be redirected toward interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence needed to determine the cause of a fire.
Bershov noted that the ministry is actively expanding the use of digital tools across its internal systems. Fire data entered by investigators into official statistical databases is now integrated with Russia’s public services portal, Gosuslugi. This integration helps speed up the confirmation and issuance of official fire-related certificates for affected residents.
Earlier reports also noted that Russia is training specialists for more technologically advanced approaches to fighting forest fires, reflecting a broader push to apply AI across emergency response and prevention.
