The sky is the limit

Ali Asgary Chris Robinson

When the Delta plane hit hard, skidding along the runway, flames shooting out before flipping over on a blustery, snowy afternoon at Toronto Pearson airport, I was already in the air on a different weather-delayed flight, completely unaware of the chaos below. It was only upon landing that the flurry of anxious text messages from worried family and friends came beeping through.

It felt like a near miss. Had I been on a later flight, I would have been caught up in the aftermath of airport operations disruptions and passenger confusion with hundreds of cancellations and delays over several days.

York University experts in disaster and emergency management, artificial intelligence (AI) and software engineering say these kinds of crises require highly complicated and detailed responses involving multiple people and systems, from first responders and airport operations to government agencies, working seamlessly together. In a world where AI is bursting into the mainstream, two York University professors believe the effect of AI on airports to help better choreograph the many pieces during a crisis could have a huge impact.

Research and Training on the Future of Airports is the newest project of Ali Asgary, director of CIFAL York and executive director of Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation at York, and Maleknaz Nayebi, associate director of CIFAL York. As part of the project, they will research and develop AI solutions for airports to help minimize risk and better coordinate response and recovery operations to ensure timely medical intervention, evacuation and safety in a crisis.

“During a disruption, there is the potential for AI to allocate staff, reroute baggage flows, or simulate different recovery scenarios to help airports respond and recover quickly and in a coordinated way,” says Nayebi.

The project positions CIFAL York as a global leader in how airports prepare for these challenges together with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s Airports and Economic Development Global Training Programme, with AI as an important piece.

“AI can help minimize the risks, help airports prepare for emergencies, respond better to emergencies, and recover or continue their operations after the emergencies."

The professors believe AI can have a much deeper role in operations. “There are possibilities for predicting potential hazards, impacts on airport operations using AI analytics, for example, considering external factors like weather conditions,” says Asgary. He is part of York’s undergraduate and graduate Disaster & Emergency Management programs in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and Faculty of Graduate Studies – the only graduate program of its kind in Ontario and one of only two in Canada.

“AI can help minimize the risks, help airports prepare for emergencies, respond better to emergencies, and recover or continue their operations after the emergencies. In our view, because airports have robust data collection for many of their functions, they are ideal when it comes to implementing AI analytics to help with solutions.”

Although last winter the emergency was a plane crash, it could have been a hurricane, flood, earthquake, tornado or fire. A crisis could also include a strike by airline workers or a cyber attack. These types of internal, external and regional crises can affect airport operations as well as the larger community. The capabilities of AI in airport operations goes far beyond that of a chatbot for communicating with passengers or fixing baggage snags.

“The research teams have demonstrated that the true pain points lie deeper in the coordination of systems and actors that make an airport run. A digital interface may reassure passengers, but without integrated operations behind it, the experience remains broken. The research is instead focusing on AI for coordination of systems to connect airlines, ground handlers, security and local authorities to act faster and smarter together,” says Nayebi of York’s Lassonde School of Engineering.

“Airports today are more than transit hubs, they are miniature cities with complex infrastructures, vast workforces, massive temporary users and immense economic influence. They are critical infrastructures that must continue to function in the face of pandemics, extreme weather, system disruptions and large-scale events such as the FIFA World Cup.”

AI can be used to predict and mitigate weather disruptions to flights and help coordinate the movement of planes and people inside and outside, as well as identify how resources will be impacted and what will be needed.

Using internal data as well as external emergency preparedness data, AI models and simulations can help anticipate and alleviate the impact on airports and passengers when incidents happen by ensuring airports can respond better during a crisis. This could mean evacuating the airport, deploying fire, police and other emergency crews, crowd management or acting as a hub for aid distribution.

“Using tools such as cameras with AI-based computer vision, airports can now detect a lot of potential hazards on the runway, such as birds, cracks, snow and animals, to prevent a crash. These tools, for example, can detect or identify a wrong person coming into the terminal or understand how passengers will react to a particular incident, like a fire,” says Asgary. “In risk and emergency response, there’s a whole lot AI can do.”

GenAI tools can be used to inform passengers during normal operations, but also in emergencies. With airports being a multicultural and multi-language hub, that information could be translated into each passenger’s first language and sent to their cell phone. “You can’t expect people to respond or react if the emergency is only broadcast in one language,” says Asgary.

“The goal,” says Nayebi, “is to equip airports over the next two to three years with AI-enabled resilience strategies to improve reliability, coordination and ultimately public trust in these vital infrastructures.”

These could include evidence-based guidance for governments and airport authorities, AI systems that anticipate disruptions and optimize airport-wide responses, tools that use data and simulation to support crisis decision-making, and training programs to help decision-makers adopt these tools responsibly and effectively.

Safer, smarter, more resilient airports are possible, says Nayebi. “For governments, the message is clear: supporting innovation in airports is not just about better travel, it is about building national resilience, economic opportunity and public trust.”

CROWD CONTROL

Countless people have died the world over in crowd crush incidents, whether at political rallies, sporting events or concerts, including in Canada, Germany, India, the United States and Ghana.

Concert goers this summer at the Rogers Stadium in Toronto got first-hand experience in the messiness and potential danger of crowds, with some commenting after the first couple of events about the need for better planning, particularly as people were leaving the busy venue. As Toronto and Vancouver prepare to host several FIFA World Cup matches in 2026, averting disaster through proper crowd management is top of mind for Asgary and Nayebi, whose work also includes crowd disaster mapping and simulation.

“Crowd management at large gatherings has become a major focus at various levels,” says Asgary. “While large sports events are common in major Canadian cities, the crowd typical of the World Cup is unfamiliar to crowd managers in Canada.”

“Crowd management is no longer just about counting people; it’s about understanding patterns, predicting risks and adapting in real time."

Nayebi and Asgary say that new and emerging technologies can not only help prepare for crowd management in advance but also provide support during events. They are now integrating these tools with AI and drone technologies to enhance crowd emergency management.

“We tested some of these integration efforts in summer 2025 during the Canada Day event in Vaughan, where our AI and drone-based crowd monitoring team was embedded within the Emergency Management team,” says Asgary. “Our ability to dynamically count and measure crowd behaviour in time and space is a crucial part of crowd management. Using a combination of drone, AI, virtual reality, digital twin and simulation tools, crowd management can be significantly improved.”

With these new technologies, a virtual representation of a concert or sporting event can be created, allowing for a more in-depth view of how to improve crowd management at specific venues.

“Crowd management is no longer just about counting people; it’s about understanding patterns, predicting risks and adapting in real time. By integrating machine learning and simulation with affordable technologies like drones and digital twins, we can design software-driven systems that help prevent tragedies before they unfold,” says Nayebi.

With a recent Global Research Excellence Seed Fund grant from York International, Asgary and Nayebi will also focus on helping multiple African countries by using more affordable technologies like drones and AI for crowd monitoring. In collaboration with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and the Africa Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers, the team hopes to develop a lasting partnership focused on research, training and knowledge exchange to reduce the occurrence and impact of crowd disasters.