Review article: Emergency Response Automation (ERA) as a Safety-Critical System: A Systematic Review of Reliability, Architecture, and Evolution (2010–2025)

Abstract. Emergency Response Automation (ERA) is becoming a critical component of managing low-probability, high-consequence natural hazards and cascading technological emergencies under severe time pressure. This systematic review consolidates ERA research from a safety-science and reliability-engineering perspective, with particular emphasis on applications to earthquakes, floods, wildfires and other environmental hazards. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we analysed 198 peer-reviewed studies (2010–2025) on automated, intelligent and data-driven emergency response technologies. A four-layer ERA framework – perception and monitoring, data and decision-making, automated response and control, and feedback and learning – was developed to integrate heterogeneous findings and trace the evolution of ERA. Empirical evidence from operational systems is contrasted with simulation-based demonstrations to assess reliability, availability, fault tolerance and human performance. Persistent challenges include data and model uncertainty under distributional shift, limited verification and validation of decision algorithms, opaque human–automation coordination, and gaps in interoperability, governance and trust. We outline a research agenda that links ERA development with resilience engineering, Safety-II and socio-technical systems design, and propose standardised metrics and evidence-grading principles to support reliable and trustworthy ERA deployment in complex infrastructures exposed to natural and technological hazards.