\u201cTrying to evacuate a dense urban area becomes quite a challenge,\u201d Ray Riordan, director of San Jose\u2019s Office of Emergency Management, told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cThere\u2019s so much information you have to try and gather, make assessments and take action in order to preserve public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, to determine how many cars might pour out onto a potential evacuation route, emergency planners might want to look at data on a neighborhood\u2019s population density and rate of car ownership. Emergency officials might also want to assess the route\u2019s safety. To do so, they would likely need to draw on yet more sources of data: flood maps, weather forecasts, traffic conditions and even real-time data from local dispatch centers.<\/p>\n
Calculating possible evacuation times from such a dizzying churn of data might take a human several hours. But the Ladris software can cut that down to mere minutes, according to city officials who conducted a nine-month evaluation of the technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a disaster scenario, one of your biggest resources is time,\u201d Ladris Technologies CEO Leo Zlimen told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cTime to make the right decisions. Time to physically go and evacuate people. And even before the disaster, time to educate people about how much time they have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ladris, based in Nevada City, California, has already partnered with nearly 100 emergency response agencies across eight states, Zlimen said.<\/p>\n
The rollout of the technology fits with\u00a0San Jose\u2019s broader embrace of AI tools<\/a>\u00a0to boost city governance. San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight previously reported the city is already using AI-powered software to\u00a0optimize public transit, translate public meetings, review official documents<\/a>\u00a0and catalogue street-level blight and safety problems such as potholes, graffiti, broken street lights and illegal dumping.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, emergency planning is\u00a0underway for the trio of high-profile sports\u00a0events set to descend on the South Bay next year \u2014\u00a0Super Bowl 60<\/a>, NCAA March Madness and\u00a0FIFA World Cup<\/a>. Santa Clara County has been\u00a0holding\u00a0drills preparing county hospital workers<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0active shooters, terrorist attacks and natural disasters<\/a>\u00a0like earthquakes.<\/p>\n Officials with the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight that county agencies have not been involved in the rollout of the Ladris software in San Jose. However, Riordan said San Jose will share information produced by the technology for the purpose of coordination and public safety.<\/p>\n He also affirmed the software will not make any evacuation calls independent of the humans who operate it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe make the decisions, but it\u2019s a tool that helps us get the information together to make the right decisions,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t just rely on AI by itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Zlimen said his company has used recent advances in machine learning technology to make predictive modeling software capable of incorporating new, unexpected streams of data.<\/p>\n He pointed to a novel application developed by San Jose officials during test runs of the software. As emergency planners modeled flood scenarios, they wanted to know where\u00a0homeless residents living next to the city\u2019s creek beds<\/a>\u00a0might flee to as the waters rise. The software came up with predictions that could help city agencies more easily locate newly formed homeless encampments and direct resources accordingly, officials said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an outcome that surprised even Zlimen\u2019s team, he said. Such flexibility will be essential for emergency planners, he argued, as the emergency risks cities face continue to morph and change over the coming decades.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a huge amount of inputs\u00a0into those problems, but very few focused metrics coming out,\u201d Zlimen said. \u201cSo this was able to (create) a process that was useful for the city, but also, potentially, a great example for how other cities may be able to tackle a similar problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Contact Keith Menconi at\u00a0keith@sanjosespotlight.com\u00a0or @KeithMenconi on X.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767265101_524_LNM-20250616-SJSPOTLIGHTLOGO-01.jpg\")
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