OpenAI announced an AI Jam for Disaster Management in Bangkok on March 30, 2026, bringing together 50 disaster management leaders from 13 countries across Southeast and South Asia. The event is a partnership between OpenAI, the Gates Foundation, the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), and DataKind.
Participants represent government agencies, multilateral organizations, and nonprofits from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam. Many are directly involved in on-the-ground disaster response, coordinating information and making time-critical decisions under pressure.
The initiative builds on OpenAI’s expansion of its OpenAI for Countries Program announced at Davos earlier this year. According to the company, the workshop focuses on moving organizations “beyond interest in AI and into real-world applications, embedding it into the operational challenges they face every day.”
Disaster response teams typically operate in resource-constrained environments with fragmented data and manual processes. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than 40% of global natural disasters annually, making AI-assisted damage assessment, multilingual crisis communication, and predictive modeling particularly relevant applications.
The workshop’s hands-on format has participants working directly with AI tools on practical scenarios drawn from their own regional challenges. OpenAI has not disclosed specific technical details of the tools being demonstrated or any cost commitments associated with the program.
