A Dynamic Model of Emergency Decision-Making: Can Citizens Decide Whether to Use AI and Robots on Grounds Other Than Performance, and Accept the Result?

Disaster-response robotics may expand what responders can technically accomplish faster than institutions authorize those capabilities for use. The risk this paper names is a society that decides whether to use AI and robots on grounds other than their performance. It presents a cross-crisis model linking incidents, citizens’ evaluations, pressure on decision-makers, revisions to permitted autonomy, usable rescue capacity, and rescue opportunities during subsequent emergencies. Three distinct temporal dynamics organize the argument: a gradually expanding technical frontier, potentially rapid changes in citizens’ acceptance, and delayed institutional revisions. The five causal links remain conditional. Analogous movements from citizen challenge to institutional authorization change have been documented in police robotics and emergency medical resource allocation. The full disaster-robotics sequence, including effects on future rescue opportunities, remains unobserved. The article distinguishes these evidence layers and identifies conditions that activate, interrupt, or challenge each connection. Two conceptual figures contrast reactive permission changes with adaptive procedures that receive and evaluate objections while maintaining justified operational capacity. The proposed governance approach combines prior publication of permissions, accessible citizen challenge, independent safety assessment, accountable revision, and prompt action when serious defects are verified. It invites research into how citizens’ participation in one crisis can reshape their own rescue options in the next.