Abu Dhabi wants a drone, not a fire truck or an ambulance, to be the first thing that reaches an emergency. The Abu Dhabi Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Management Centre (ADCMC) is showing an AI-assisted drone at the Military Medicine exhibition at ADNEC. The exhibition runs alongside the 46th World Congress of Military Medicine, which the UAE Ministry of Defence is hosting with ADNEC Group.
Shaikha Khamis Al Azeezi, who heads ADCMC’s Business Continuity and Alternative Services Department, said the aim is to make the drone the first responder to emergencies, crises and disasters across the Emirates. She described two main uses. In a large fire, the drone tracks how the flames are spreading and sends that information to response teams, including safe routes for evacuating people. In severe weather, it can show where water is building up. That second use matters in a country that saw record rainfall and widespread flooding in April 2024.
The drone can also be sent to sudden incidents in places that ground crews struggle to reach. It carries cameras and sensors that the centre says make search and rescue easier.
Several basic questions are still unanswered. ADCMC has not said how many drones it has, when the service will launch, or whether the drone flies on its own or with a remote pilot. It has also not cited any real incident where the drone was used, so it is unclear whether this is a working service or a showcase concept. Using drones for aerial views of an incident is not new in itself. The more ambitious idea here is putting a drone at the front of the response chain.
The drone is one part of a wider set of AI tools aimed at keeping Abu Dhabi running during disruptions. One of them, Jaheziya, simulates exercises and incidents across the emirate, checks which entity is responsible for what, and gives feedback to the organisations involved. Another, AIN, is described by Al Azeezi as fully agentic. ADCMC staff originally built it, and its AI agents cover business continuity, risk, operations and exercises. The centre has also developed a business continuity standard for the health sector with the Department of Health. It sets out requirements for each critical process, and an agentic AI platform audits hospitals and assets against it.
This fits a busy few weeks for AI in Abu Dhabi’s government. On 9 November, the emirate and OpenAI launched Machine-Readable Government, a permit-checking system in which officials keep the final say on high-stakes decisions. In October, Abu Dhabi created TAMM Global to license its AI government platform to other countries. ADCMC is taking a similar outward-facing approach and inviting other governments to visit and study its methods.
Al Azeezi said the next five years will bring projects that automate the emergency framework with AI support. The key test for the drone will be whether it shows up in an actual incident report rather than only on an exhibition floor.