Cloudera and Mercy Corps unveil VERA agentic AI assistant

Cloudera and Mercy Corps reported the next phase of their partnership through Verified Evidence & Research Assistant (VERA), an agentic AI solution intended to automate research and analysis workflows for humanitarian teams. The update centers on faster production of localized, crisis-specific insights in environments described as resource-constrained.

Cloudera said the work built on nearly two and a half years of collaboration that started with exploring how enterprise AI could support humanitarian operations and progressed to a production-ready deployment of agentic AI workflows. VERA was described as automating research, aggregating information across diverse sources, and generating localized analysis intended to support faster, more informed decisions.

VERA is powered by Cloudera AI Studios and built on Amazon Web Services, using Anthropic’s Claude models. Cloudera stated that Claude took system prompts from the agents and grounded them in humanitarian themes, so the agents could work responsibly and effectively. The solution supports automation of research and secondary data review workflows, with outputs intended to be context-aware.

Cloudera and Mercy Corps said VERA was co-developed through a business analysis process led by Cloudera’s Professional Services & Training team and Mercy Corps subject matter experts, with ongoing engagement with the user community. Claimed applications included agricultural and food security analysis in Sudan, election security reporting in Colombia, and disease outbreak monitoring and crisis reporting in Central and East Africa.

Jim Bisordi, Cloudera's SVP of Professional Services, said, “Humanitarian organizations are being asked to do more with less while responding to increasingly complex global crises,” and continued, “With VERA, we are demonstrating how agentic AI can move beyond experimentation to deliver measurable, real-world impact. This work with Mercy Corps shows what is possible when advanced AI capabilities are paired with deep domain expertise and a shared commitment to improving outcomes for vulnerable communities. As the leader of Professional Services & Training, it's critical that we bring our outcome-focused delivery methodology to every engagement, ensuring we are not just implementing technology, but helping organizations achieve meaningful, measurable business and mission outcomes.” Josh DeWald, Mercy Corps VP, Technical Support, Evidence and Program Quality, said, “We see VERA as an important future tool for conducting research and secondary data reviews,” and added, “Tasks that once required extensive manual effort can now be completed in a fraction of the time, while our teams focus on interpreting and validating outputs. In Sudan, for example, getting food security analysis into our teams' hands sooner contributes to an improved response for communities facing food insecurity.” The organizations said they expect additional gains as Mercy Corps integrates VERA into its research and reporting workflows.

Provided by Globe Newswire on behalf of Cloudera. Click to read original content.