Building City and Regional Situation Reports with AI
A step-by-step guide for generating forward-looking threat and hazard assessments using ChatGPT
The purpose of this prompt is to help emergency managers, public safety professionals, and security leaders generate forward-looking situation reports for their city or region.
These reports summarize emerging threats, hazards, and risks over the next seven days—providing a foundation for proactive operational and resource planning.
Disclaimers
This prompt produces a reasonably accurate situation report, but it is not flawless. Outputs should be treated as informational drafts, not final intelligence products.
All information should be independently verified before being operationalized or distributed.
Review and apply the Review Process Recommendations before using or sharing any output generated by this prompt.
Instructions to Develop the Situation Report
Copy the full prompt (provided at the end of this article) into ChatGPT.
Enable the Deep Research function when running it.
Review the initial response for accuracy and completeness, and conduct independent fact checks on all claims, statistics, and forecasts prior to use.
Share the finalized weekly situation report to develop organization-wide situational awareness.
Recommendations for Editing and Sharing
Based on our use of this prompt, here are some trends in prompt outputs that are worth sharing:
If there are no sources listed: Treat the information as unverified and likely fabrication. Despite language in the prompt intended to reduce fabrication, AI models can still produce unsupported statements. Any bullet or sentence without a cited source requires fact-checking.
If information seems outdated: Click the included links and confirm publication dates—sometimes older data (information from past years with the same dates) is surfaced in search results.
If results seem incomplete or inconsistent: Wait a few minutes and re-run the prompt to mitigate batching or search indexing issues. Running it multiple times can yield a broader set of sources.
To build process resilience without AI: Use the links generated in the report to compile a manual monitoring list of verified sources (e.g., NWS, CDC, CISA, USGS, etc.). This ensures you can replicate or validate reports independently of any AI system.