Exclusive: How Cloudera’s AI platform targets faster life-saving decisions

At the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney, Cloudera showcased how its hybrid data platform is empowering humanitarian organisations such as Mercy Corps to make real-time, life-saving decisions in high-stakes environments.

Building on recent momentum - including last year's acquisition of Octopai, which addresses the critical need for data lineage and governance, Cloudera is highlighting how greater clarity and trust in data help teams respond faster and more effectively.

This platform evolution highlights the growing importance of understanding where data comes from, who's using it, and how, enabling accurate and actionable insights in crisis situations.

TechDay sat down with Cloudera's Field CTO for Australia and New Zealand, Vini Cardoso, and Regional Vice President Keir Garrett to discuss the impacts of the platform.

According to the pair, this powerful development is already proving its worth in humanitarian operations and has significant implications for Australia's climate resilience.

Cardoso described the platform as "a pivotal moment for organisations that need to act fast in high-pressure environments."

He said that incorporating lineage and governance via Octopai, acquired last year, ensures that "the right data is in the right hands, securely and with full context", enabling teams to make decisions with confidence.

"Organisations struggle - where is data, what type of data is coming through, where is it going, what's the impact if I change data attributes? We can collect data, help them impact-analysis, and enrich the governance capabilities."

This means that any stakeholder, from first responders to policy-makers, can track the origin and journey of data, verifying its accuracy before acting on it.

Garrett said the timing could not be more critical. "In Australia, we've had royal commissions warning that fires will expedite and grow."

"Around AUD $2.4 billion was lost to natural disasters in the previous year," she explained. "And globally, natural disasters caused an estimated US $250 billion in damages in 2023." She emphasised that combining the Octopai lineage system with real-time analytics is essential to ensure data integrity under pressure.

At the heart of the announcement is a chatbot developed for Mercy Corps, the international humanitarian organisation, which leverages Cloudera's unified platform and large language models to assist field operatives.

"This tool does get their own data so it provides a contextual response, with contextual guidance to address the critical situation." Accessible via natural language, staff can ask questions like "Where do I send help?" and receive answers informed by call logs, service requests, social-media feeds, historical incident records and real-time weather.

Garrett explained that the chatbot was deliberately built so that "people in the field don't have to be AI specialists".

"It's the difference between having data and being able to act on it." This innovation marks a major advance in operational intelligence: one that has direct consequences for saving lives.

"Mercy Corps is a real-kind-of-a great use case to demonstrate the analogy of what you can do and the benefits. It resonates for emergency services, government sector and defence," Cardoso added.

He also revealed that, thanks to the platform, Mercy Corps saw measurable improvements in response time and efficiency - though he did not disclose exact figures, promising to release more data in coming weeks.

This announcement matters for Australia. The State of the Climate Report 2024, co-authored by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, warns of rising temperatures, extreme rainfall, coastal inundation, fire and drought - events occurring at an increased pace.

The Australian Government has committed up to AUD $1 billion through the Disaster Relief Fund between 1 July 2023 and 2028 to tackle such threats.

"When you bring that into today, how can we leverage those insights to predict, prevent and put the right investments into the right place?" Garrett said.

Cardoso emphasised the relevance beyond natural disasters: "The crisis doesn't always have to be human or global. It applies to cyber-attacks, fraud and commercial-sector shocks as well."

The implication is clear - organisations in both public and private sectors can benefit from Cloudera's upgraded platform to react faster and smarter to any high-stakes scenario.

From a technical standpoint, Cloudera's platform now natively combines real-time streaming analytics with historical data.

"Cloudera helps with bringing the real-time streaming analytics processing to the platform so you tap to the multiple real-time data sources with historical data," Cardoso added. The system filters out outliers via rules and validation checks, ensuring that only reliable information reaches decision-makers.

Governance remains a cornerstone.

"With Octopai we can help customers to understand their entire data landscape," Cardoso said.

He stressed that visibility into data flows supports impact analysis, migration projects and overall trust in analytics. Garrett also highlighted the platform's ability to maintain compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA - a vital capability for organisations operating internationally.

The leaders were equally forceful on ethics and fairness. Cardoso said: "Security by design - not an afterthought. The right data to the right people with the tools and methodologies that can produce a good outcome also needs to be optimal."

Garrett confronted AI bias directly.

"AI itself isn't biased. But people are. We must ensure models are transparent and outcomes are fair - whether in hiring, healthcare or humanitarian aid."

These comments underscore Cloudera's ambition to build not just smarter systems, but systems that embed human-centred design and ethical intent. Garrett said that institutional safeguards - such as explainable AI, cultural awareness, and bias mitigation - must complement technical excellence.

Both leaders stressed the tangible impact of their enhanced platform.

"We're empowering teams to make faster, smarter decisions in a timely manner, and not everybody has to be a data and AI expert to make those decisions. They've got it at their fingertips," Garrett concluded.

"Technology can't replace judgment. But it can amplify it - especially when lives are on the line."