New IAEA Research Project to Enhance Disaster Management with AI-Augmented Non-Destructive Testing

Non-destructive testing encompasses a suite of techniques used to evaluate material properties and detect hidden damage without  harming the structure. NDT has long played an important role in post-disaster safety evaluations. Through regional and national technical cooperation projects, the IAEA has supported countries in building expertise in NDT for civil engineering, helping to develop national capacities for rapid infrastructure assessment following disasters.

Today, AI offers opportunities to significantly enhance the speed, accuracy and practicality of these assessments.  Deep learning methods and convolutional neural networks, for example, can automate damage detection, accelerate data interpretation and ensure more consistent evaluation of complex structures.

When combined with traditional NDT methods — including ultrasonics, radiography, imaging, rebar detection and hardness testing — or applied to data from drone-based inspections, thermal, radiographic and tomographic imagery, AI-augmented NDT can  expand the toolkit available to emergency responders and engineers.

The CRP aims to strengthen global disaster resilience by developing and validating AI-enhanced NDT methodologies that enable rapid, accurate and practical structural integrity assessments.

The project will foster international collaboration by bringing together research institutions, laboratories, universities and specialized agencies from IAEA Member countries to advance the next generation of NDT for disaster resilience. 

The outcomes of this CRP are expected to benefit engineers, civil protection authorities, disaster-response teams and national institutions responsible for infrastructure safety.

Specific research objectives include:

• Investigating AI and other emerging technologies for developing advanced NDT methodologies applicable to complex disaster scenarios.

• Designing experimental studies to generate datasets for training and validating AI models used in NDT for civil engineering.

• Establishing protocols and data standards for the collection, processing and sharing of AI-enhanced NDT data to support interoperability and coordinated disaster management.

• Developing and validating AI-augmented NDT methodologies that improve the speed, accuracy and reliability of post-disaster structural assessments.

• Creating frameworks for effectively integrating AI-enhanced NDT outputs into engineering models and decision-making processes for disaster management.

Research organizations interested in participating in this CRP are invited to submit their Proposal for Research Contract or Agreement via email, no later than 27 February 2026. Submissions should be sent to the IAEA’s Research Contracts Administration Section using the appropriate template available on the Coordinated Research Activities web portal. 

The IAEA encourages applicant institutions to involve female and young researchers in their proposals.

For further information related to this CRP, potential applicants should use the contact form on the CRP web page.