There is an increasing gap between global humanitarian needs and funding available, making evidence-based, data-driven aid delivery crucial. Humanitarian organisations are faced with overwhelming volumes of complex data with capacity constraints in rapid data extraction and analysis. Low data literacy sideline highly capable local organisations. In 2023, DFS’ Catalyst Lab combined DFS’ expertise in humanitarian data analysis and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and designed GANNET Virtual Assistant, a collaborative, generative AI-powered tool to help humanitarian organisations access and extract life-saving information to boost the timeliness, effectiveness, and accuracy of humanitarian responses and anticipatory action.
DFS has built an accessible, AI-powered “virtual assistant” for humanitarian staff to enable them to access, extract, and visualise life-saving information from the vast data sources available publicly and within key responding organisations, including local organisations. To DFS’ knowledge, GANNET Virtual Assistant is the first real-time, end-to-end Generative AI platform that combines near real-time Generative AI assistance, analytics, monitoring and alerting features for humanitarian data collaboration and effective decision-making.
Continuing the journey, DFS focuses on ongoing product evolution. We actively seek partner feedback, fostering customization to meet the evolving needs of the user community. This phase also involves fundraising efforts to sustain and expand the tools impact. If you are interested in being part of this journey, please contact hello@datafriendlyspace.org.
GANNET Virtual Assistant is a product of the DFS Catalyst Lab, a place where DFS staff can exchange ideas, knowledge, and build ideas and tools to make a positive difference in the social impact sphere. We followed a sustainable and scalable model focused on five key phases for the beta version of the GANNET Virtual Assistant and opened up GANNET Virtual Assistant to the humanitarian community to gather feedback and understand where to make improvements.
GANNET Virtual Assistant combines the capabilities of a customised AI chatbot, collaborative data sharing, actionable data insights, and robust security to transform how frontline humanitarian organisations access and respond to sector-specific information in crisis situations. The Virtual Assistant empowers humanitarian responders, including those operating in low resource environments, to effortlessly recognise patterns and correlations in historical and real-time data, allowing them to concentrate on high quality humanitarian response delivery, instead of time-consuming data management. The AI-fueled knowledge base will support predictive evaluations in the humanitarian sector as global resources increasingly shift to disaster preparedness and resource allocation to support early action.
