Cause
AI for Humanitarian Response
service locations mapped by LifeForce AI for Ukrainian refugees
15 reported stories
In a crisis the scarce thing is time. AI is being used to map disaster damage in hours, warn of airstrikes and floods before they arrive, predict famine earlier, place refugees where they are likely to thrive, find landmines in drone photos and get advice to farmers at a hundredth of the cost. These stories cover humanitarian and food security projects.
The AI for Good Foundation built LifeForce, a platform that matched displaced Ukrainians with 37,000+ service locations for food, shelter, and medical care. DataKind has connected pro bono data scientists with 300+ social organizations to solve problems from refugee resettlement to disaster prediction. The UN now uses AI in 50+ agencies for everything from famine early warning to landmine detection.
Stories
Humanitarian · 6 min read
Annie MOORE Decides Where Refugees Are Most Likely to Thrive
Annie MOORE matches arriving refugees to the US communities where they are most likely to find work, lifting early employment by over 20 percent for HIAS.
Agriculture · 7 min read
NASA Harvest Uses Satellites and AI to Map Every Farm Field on Earth
NASA Harvest's machine learning reads satellite imagery to map crops and forecast yields, from Ukrainian wheat fields during war to Ugandan drought zones.
Agriculture · 7 min read
Farmer.Chat Cut the Cost of Agricultural Advice by 100x
Digital Green's AI assistant Farmer.Chat answers smallholder farmers in their own language and cuts the cost of advice from 35 dollars to 35 cents.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
Google Open Buildings Mapped 1.8 Billion Homes the World Had Never Counted
Agriculture · 7 min read
Google and the Gates Foundation Are Bringing AI to 200 Million Farmers
A $100 million partnership will scale real time climate, crop and language AI tools to 200 million smallholder farmers across Africa and South Asia.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
AI Scans Drone Photos to Find Landmines Hidden Across Ukraine
Safe Pro AI's SpotlightAI analyzes drone imagery to find landmines and unexploded bombs across Ukraine, processing each image in 0.2 seconds.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
Hala Systems Sentry Warned Syrians of Airstrikes Before They Hit
Hala Systems built Sentry, an AI early warning system that detected warplanes over Syria and gave civilians minutes of warning, reaching 2.3 million people.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
The Famine Early Warning System Is Adding AI to Predict Hunger Sooner
FEWS NET, the famine early warning network born after the 1980s Ethiopian famines, is adopting machine learning to forecast food crises months ahead.
Humanitarian · 6 min read
Planet's Satellites and AI Are Mapping Disaster Damage in Hours, Not Weeks
Planet Labs images the whole Earth daily and applies AI to deliver building damage assessments to responders within hours of wildfires and floods.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
Tarjimly Connects Refugees to Interpreters in Minutes Using AI
The nonprofit app Tarjimly uses machine learning to match refugees and aid workers with volunteer translators across hundreds of language pairs in minutes.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
Food Banks Are Using AI to Get the Right Food to the Right Families
From Feeding America's supply chain analytics to academic routing research, AI is helping food banks move millions of meals more efficiently and equitably.
Agriculture · 7 min read
BeeHero's Hive Sensors and AI Are Keeping the World's Pollinators Alive
BeeHero fits hives with sensors and machine learning that track bee health in real time across hundreds of thousands of hives and millions of acres of crops.
Agriculture · 6 min read
CottonAce: AI vs Pesticides in India
How Wadhwani AI's smartphone app uses computer vision to help millions of cotton farmers in India identify pests and reduce pesticide use by up to 50 percent.
Humanitarian · 7 min read
GiveDirectly Sends Cash Before Disasters
AI and satellite data predict floods, droughts, and hurricanes, enabling anticipatory cash transfers that reach vulnerable families before disaster hits.
Agriculture · 6 min read
Nuru: Saving Cassava Crops Across Africa
PlantVillage's Nuru app uses AI to diagnose cassava diseases from phone photos, fully offline, helping farmers protect the crop that feeds 800 million people.
Questions people ask
How is AI used in disaster response?
Satellite images are compared before and after an event to map damage within hours, flood and famine models give warnings days to months ahead, and matching systems place displaced people and aid where they are needed. The stories here report each project's results.
How is AI used in humanitarian aid?
Early warning, damage mapping, resettlement matching, interpreter matching for refugees, landmine detection and food distribution. Each use on this page is a project with published numbers rather than a pilot announcement.