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The increase in both the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, coupled with recent advancements in artificial intelligence, has introduced prospects for investigating the potential of new technologies to facilitate disaster response processes. Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA), a labor-intensive procedure necessitating manual examination of residential structures to ascertain post-disaster damage severity, stands to significantly benefit from the integration of computer vision-based classification algorithms, promising efficiency gains and heightened accuracy. Our paper proposes a Vision Transformer (ViT)-based model for classifying damage severity, achieving an accuracy rate of 95%. Notably, our model, trained on a repository of over 18,000 ground-level images of homes with damage severity annotated by damage assessment professionals during the 2020–2022 California wildfires, represents a novel application of ViT technology within this domain. Furthermore, we have open sourced this dataset—the first of its kind and scale—to be used by the research community. Additionally, we have developed a publicly accessible web application prototype built on this classification algorithm, which we have demonstrated to disaster management practitioners and received feedback on. Hence, our contribution to the literature encompasses the provision of a novel imagery dataset, an applied framework from field professionals, and a damage severity classification model with high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The California bearing ratio (CBR) value of subgrade is the most used parameter for dimensioning flexible and rigid pavements. The test for determining the CBR value is typically conducted under soaked conditions and is costly, labour-intensive, and time-consuming. Machine learning (ML) techniques have been recently implemented in engineering practice to predict the CBR value from the soil index properties with satisfactory results. However, they provide only deterministic predictions, which do not account for the aleatoric uncertainty linked to input variables and the epistemic uncertainty inherent in the model itself. This work addresses this limitation by introducing an ML model based on the natural gradient boosting (NGBoost) algorithm, becoming the first study to estimate the soaked CBR value from this probabilistic perspective. A database of 2130 soaked CBR tests was compiled for this study. The NGBoost model showcased robust predictive performance, establishing itself as a reliable and effective algorithm for predicting the soaked CBR value. Furthermore, it produced probabilistic CBR predictions as probability density functions, facilitating the establishment of reliable confidence intervals, representing a notable improvement compared to conventional deterministic models. Finally, the Shapley additive explanations method was implemented to investigate the interpretability of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]