Culturally adaptive mobile agent dialogue to communicate with people in crisis recovery

We present ongoing research concerning the interaction between users and environmental agencies through autonomous mobile agents in the environmental monitoring domain. The overarching EU FP7 project DIADEM, concerns the development of a system that detects potentially hazardous situations in populated areas using input from both a distributed sensor network and humans through their mobile devices. We propose a model of interaction with a system where concerned citizens communicate with a social virtual agent through their mobile phone to inform the environmental monitoring agency about unusual smells. In case of an emergency, people will receive instructions or directions for evacuation from the agent. In this paper, we review relevant literature and describe the development of a dynamic dialogue agent that supports international collaboration by adapting its social interaction to the cultural background of the humans it interacts with.