Cloudera partners with Mercy Corps to enhance aid delivery

Cloudera has announced a partnership with Mercy Corps to improve humanitarian aid delivery through AI-driven tools.

Cloudera's collaboration with Mercy Corps involves creating the AI-driven Methods Matcher tool, which aims to aid humanitarian experts by summarising, referencing, and recommending research and data-driven responses to crises. This initiative is intended to enhance the delivery of life-saving aid in crisis-hit regions such as the Middle East and Africa, where accurate data is essential to prevent agricultural issues from developing into full-scale humanitarian disasters.

The partnership emerged from Cloudera's participation in the AI for Changemakers programme by Tech To The Rescue and involves the use of Cloudera's latest AI Inference solution with NVIDIA AI on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Manasi Vartak, Chief AI Architect at Cloudera, commented, "The power of AI is limitless and our work with Mercy Corps and Tech To The Rescue's AI for Changemakers program is just the tip of the iceberg for what's possible when we leverage AI to solve challenges. It's about more than just using technology for social impact – it's about helping organizations build the skills and capacity to leverage AI for real-world impact and create lasting change."

Methods Matcher provides Mercy Corps field teams with examples of AI projects previously executed successfully in different regions, offering insights into program design, implementation, and decision-making. This cloud-based application ensures field teams have access to an AI assistant capable of querying a repository of information, including research papers and past projects, enhancing decision-making and resource allocation.

The AI Inference service significantly speeds up Generative AI application development, allowing Mercy Corps to expand AI solutions while rapidly reducing operational overhead. This results in faster, data-driven decisions bolstered by scalable and secure cloud infrastructure.

Alicia Morrison, Director of Data Science at Mercy Corps, stated, "Our partnership with Cloudera has enabled us to deploy an AI solution with unprecedented precision and speed, enabling us to meet our organizational commitments to delivering life-saving aid using innovative, evidence-based methods. Cloudera's commitment to supporting our team with the power of AI will help us to respond to crises faster and make critical, data-driven decisions when it matters most."

Mercy Corps' involvement with the AI for Changemakers programme signifies a step forward in leveraging technology to enhance crisis response capabilities. Mercy Corps will discuss the specific impacts of AI solutions, such as Methods Matcher, on humanitarian aid deployment during a panel at the upcoming AWS re:Invent event.