Toward Equitable Recovery: A Fairness-Aware AI Framework for Prioritizing Post-Flood Aid in Bangladesh

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fairness-aware AI framework for equitable post-flood aid prioritization in Bangladesh, reducing biases against marginalized regions while maintaining high predictive accuracy.

Contribution

It adapts healthcare fairness techniques to disaster management, developing an adversarial debiasing model that improves aid allocation fairness in flood-affected areas.

Findings

Reduces statistical parity difference by 41.6%

Decreases regional fairness gaps by 43.2%

Maintains strong predictive accuracy (R-squared=0.784)

Abstract

Post-disaster aid allocation in developing nations often suffers from systematic biases that disadvantage vulnerable regions, perpetuating historical inequities. This paper presents a fairness-aware artificial intelligence framework for prioritizing post-flood aid distribution in Bangladesh, a country highly susceptible to recurring flood disasters. Using real data from the 2022 Bangladesh floods that affected 7.2 million people and caused 405.5 million US dollars in damages, we develop an adversarial debiasing model that predicts flood vulnerability while actively removing biases against marginalized districts and rural areas. Our approach adapts fairness-aware representation learning techniques from healthcare AI to disaster management, employing a gradient reversal layer that forces the model to learn bias-invariant representations. Experimental results on 87 upazilas across 11 districts demonstrate that our framework reduces statistical parity difference by 41.6 percent, decreases regional fairness gaps by 43.2 percent, and maintains strong predictive accuracy (R-squared=0.784 vs baseline 0.811). The model generates actionable priority rankings ensuring aid reaches the most vulnerable populations based on genuine need rather than historical allocation patterns. This work demonstrates how algorithmic fairness techniques can be effectively applied to humanitarian contexts, providing decision-makers with tools to implement more equitable disaster recovery strategies.