Cloudera and Mercy Corps create AI tool that recommends crisis responses

Cloudera, the only true hybrid platform for data, analytics, and AI, today announced it has partnered with Mercy Corps, a global organisation working with communities in 40 countries affected by crisis, disaster, poverty and climate change to address urgent needs and develop long-term solutions.

The collaboration, formed through Cloudera's participation in Tech To The Rescue's AI for Changemakers programme, leverages Cloudera’s new AI inference solution with NVIDIA AI on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable Mercy Corps to advance the precision and effectiveness of its aid distribution technology.

Mercy Corps is present in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Myanmar. In regions like the Middle East and Africa, agricultural crises can quickly become humanitarian disasters, threatening millions of lives. Despite this urgency, humanitarian organisations often struggle to access timely, accurate data to anticipate and respond effectively to these crises and minimise their impact, Cloudera said.

To help close this gap, Cloudera partnered with Mercy Corps to develop the AI-driven Methods Matcher tool. The AI-powered solution can summarise, reference, and recommend research, best practices, and data-driven crisis responses for global humanitarian aid experts. It equips Mercy Corps’ field teams with examples of relevant AI projects successfully executed in other regions, giving them insight into analyses for programme design, implementation, and decision-making.

Built by Cloudera Professional Services, Methods Matcherreduces research time and boosts response efficiency. Running on AWS with full-stack NVIDIA AI accelerated computing, this cloud-based application offers Mercy Corps teams access to an AI assistant that queries a curated repository of critical information, including research papers, past projects, and best practices to improve decision-making and resource deployment.

The assistant leverages Cloudera’s newly-released AI Inference service, powered by the NVIDIA AI accelerated computing platform — to speed generative AI application development up to 36x. This enables Mercy Corps to scale its AI solutions rapidly, reducing operational overhead and making faster, data-driven decisions under pressure, all supported by cloud infrastructure that ensures scalability, security, and cost-effectiveness.

“The power of AI is limitless and our work with Mercy Corps and Tech To The Rescue’s AI for Changemakers programme is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible when we leverage AI to solve challenges,” said Manasi Vartak, Chief AI Architect at Cloudera.

“It’s about more than just using technology for social impact – it’s about helping organisations build the skills and capacity to leverage AI for real-world impact and create lasting change.”

“Our partnership with Cloudera has enabled us to deploy an AI solution with unprecedented precision and speed, enabling us to meet our organisational commitments to delivering life-saving aid using innovative, evidence-based methods,” said Alicia Morrison, Director of Data Science, Mercy Corps.

“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.”

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