About UNOCHA
At the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), we bring the world together to tackle humanitarian emergencies and save the lives of people caught in crises.Activities by UNOCHA
Ask ReliefWeb Q&A Chatbot
Global United StatesThe Ask ReliefWeb Q&A Chatbot allows a site visitor to ask questions about the (single) report page that they are viewing. On average, a single report had an attached file of approximately 17 pages. The Q&A Chatbot retrieves answers from that material.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsUnited Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) AI project summarization tool
GlobalWe’ve developed an AI summarization tool using Microsoft Azure OpenAI for the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). This tool efficiently processes Microsoft Word project proposals, extracting relevant information from various sections to generate a three-sentence project summary. Traditionally, CERF program officers manually crafted these summaries, which consumed approximately 5 minutes each. Our tool, however, produces accurate summaries within seconds. Given the volume of over 500 CERF projects annually, this tool stands to save more than 40 hours of staff time per year—a significant efficiency gain.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsAutomated tagging of ReliefWeb content
Global United StatesLeverage a Large Language Model to automatically apply certain categories to content being posted to ReliefWeb - https://reliefweb.int/. The intention is to reduce human efforts in areas that where AI can provide a suitable solution thereby allowing our human capacity to focus on more impactful activities. We are using LLM without any fine-tuning as we have found the results to be more than sufficient ‘as is’.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsAI based content classification service
Global United StatesManually analyzing a large volume of text data can be a tedious and time-consuming task. By leveraging Azure Open AI service, the process becomes significantly more efficient. The service, built using Microsoft Power Platform, enables end-users to feed in text snippets or excel spreadsheets, receiving categorized content in return. This versatile service can be configured to analyze diverse content types, including news snippets, project descriptions, social media posts, or budgetary spreadsheets. One notable application involves the Climate Team at OCHA, utilizing the service to analyze historical data within OCHA-administered Country-based Pooled Funds. Project summaries are input into the service, allowing the discernment of activities specifically relevant to climate adaptation. This enhances OCHA's ability to optimize the effectiveness and impact of these initiatives in the future. Additionally, the Digital Services section at OCHA employs the service to analyze Internet or Cyber Security incidents, categorizing them into types such as Internet Outage and Data Breach. Leveraging Microsoft Power Automate Flow for real-time classification, the data feeds directly into a Power BI dashboard used for monitoring purposes. We are also exploring applications such as automatically sifting through social media postings to identify those most relevant to humanitarian work.
Activity Type AI Tools/Solutions