Community First, AI Second: Dispatches from WCEMS 2025

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Dear reader,

In this week’s edition of Wag The Dog, I’m writing from Abu Dhabi, where I had the chance to both speak and listen at the World Crisis and Emergency Management Summit 2025 last week.

Giving a keynote on AI and crisis communication was a highlight, but what really stayed with me were the hallway conversations, the unexpected connections, and the shared sense that the old models just aren’t enough anymore.

This edition is part reflection, part field notes—from the front lines of how we’re rethinking resilience.

Enjoy!

Table of Contents

• Free webinar on AI and Crisis Communication

• From Abu Dhabi With Urgency: Notes from WCEMS 2025

• A Summit That Spoke Many Languages

• A Talk on Uncertainty—and the Tools We Need

• Resilience Needs New Financial Wiring

• Technology With (and For) People

• A Closing Worth Remembering

• Final Thoughts

• Let’s meet!

Free webinar on AI and Crisis Communication

Before we move to the main article, please check out this free webinar on AI and Crisis Communication. I am looking forward to seeing you there!

From Abu Dhabi With Urgency: Notes from WCEMS 2025

Abu Dhabi doesn’t do things halfway, and the 2025 World Crisis and Emergency Management Summit (WCEMS)¹ was no exception.

Over two tightly packed days, I found myself among government officials, researchers, first responders, military planners, and private-sector technologists—all circling the same question: how do we build real resilience in an age of constant, overlapping emergencies?

I was invited to deliver a keynote, which is always an honour. But more than that, I went to listen, to gauge the pulse of global preparedness thinking—and what I heard was both sobering and energising.

A Summit That Spoke Many Languages

WCEMS 2025 lived up to its name. The diversity in the room was staggering. Delegates from every continent filled the halls at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, and even more joined virtually.

Conversations flowed in Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, French, and English. And yet, through all this variety, certain ideas cut through the noise—foremost among them, the centrality of community preparedness.

Not lip-service, either. Speaker after speaker, from ministers to field experts, underscored how crucial local trust and coordination are when larger systems begin to strain.

The UAE’s role as host wasn’t just ceremonial; it’s actively pushing this shift. New partnerships with institutions like PureHealth and the Abu Dhabi School of Management show a desire to bridge education, healthcare, and crisis management. That matters.

It sends a message: preparedness isn’t something to be bolted on when a crisis hits. It needs to be woven into the fabric of everyday life.

A Talk on Uncertainty—and the Tools We Need

My own talk focused on the role of communication in the face of what I call “polycrisis” and “permacrisis”—the twin realities of overlapping threats and never-ending instability.

I introduced the Universal Adaptive Crisis Communication (UACC) Framework, a structure that blends AI, behavioural insights, and scenario thinking to help decision-makers communicate with clarity when facts are still fuzzy and time is tight.

The framework rests on five principles, including culturally adaptive messaging, emotional intelligence, and forecasting interconnected crises using AI. These aren’t academic ideas, and I covered them here before.

The key point I tried to make is this: communication isn’t a downstream activity. It’s part of the crisis response architecture itself. And if we don’t invest in that architecture now, we’ll keep seeing the same mistakes—delayed messages, public confusion, misinformation spirals.

Resilience Needs New Financial Wiring

Another area where the summit didn’t shy away from hard truths: money. Plenty of attention was given to new models of crisis finance. The old model—scrambling for funds after a disaster—just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Speakers from the UN, Abu Dhabi’s economic leadership, and development agencies spoke candidly about risk-based planning, pre-arranged finance tools, and how to bring private capital into the equation without losing focus on equity and access.

One session I attended explored “resilience bonds”—a form of insurance-linked security that pays out to governments when predefined risk thresholds are met. It’s technical, yes. But it’s also urgent.

We can’t expect overstretched budgets to keep absorbing global shocks year after year. The financial architecture has to evolve.

Technology With (and For) People

AI was everywhere at the summit—but not in the usual abstract, buzzword-laden way. Several sessions explored practical use cases, from real-time misinformation tracking during emergencies to predictive modelling for disaster zones.

My talk’s emphasis on “trust calibration”—the idea that AI tools must earn and maintain public trust, not just push messages—echoed much of what was covered by colleagues.

There’s growing consensus that technology won’t solve crises on its own. It’s a force multiplier, not a silver bullet.

A Closing Worth Remembering

The summit wrapped with a set of five clear recommendations: deepen international cooperation, invest in communities, embed AI thoughtfully, prepare leaders to handle ambiguity, and overhaul financial resilience models.

Plenty of conferences end with vague statements. This one didn’t. The WCEMS Final Report – out soon – will capture all these threads and read less like a policy document and more like a pragmatic blueprint.

There’s ambition, yes—but also clear next steps, which is rare.

Final Thoughts

I came away from WCEMS 2025 reminded of how far the field of crisis management has come—and how far it still has to go. The shift in language alone is telling.

Where we once spoke about disaster response, we now talk about resilience ecosystems. Where communication was once an afterthought, it’s now a central plank. And where preparedness meant stockpiling gear, it now also means stockpiling trust, data, and financial flexibility.

None of these ideas are abstract. They’re already shaping the next generation of policies, platforms, and partnerships.

More than anything, the summit underscored that the global risk landscape is changing faster than most systems are designed to adapt. But change is happening.

It’s happening in memorandums signed in Abu Dhabi, in frameworks being quietly adopted by emergency agencies, and in the conversations between officials and technologists who, just a few years ago, rarely spoke to each other.

It’s now up to all of us to make sure those conversations turn into action.

References and further reading.

1  Future Internet. (2025). World Crisis & Emergency Management Summit. World Crisis & Emergency Management Summit. https://wcems.ae/en/home

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