Everest Effect Introduces Industry's First Crisis Impact Score™ To Improve Distribution of Resources To People Who Need It the Most

NEW YORK, July 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Everest Effect, the leading platform for needs verification, today announced the introduction of the first proprietary machine learning tool with KPMG to improve how businesses, governments, and nonprofits distribute resources to people in need. The Crisis Impact Score™ measures the full impact a crisis has had on an individual's life by evaluating the severity of systemic and acute issues they are facing. The patent-pending Score gives visibility to those often overlooked during a crisis and enables organizations to recalibrate how they distribute aid, eliminating waste, minimizing fraud, and accelerating economic recovery for those most in need. 

At the core of the Score is market-leading needs verification capabilities that validate and verify requests based on the crisis an individual is experiencing, such as unemployment, food insecurity, or displacement due to a disaster. The technology leverages proprietary data from Everest Effect's marketplace and the KPMG Signals Repository, along with open source data. Currently, the Score evaluates four key areas of data: neighborhood demographics, such as community housing, health, and access to needed resources; severity and fragility of the disaster area; self-reported challenges, such as whether an individual is unemployed or a single parent; and identity verification. Its unique methodology assesses holistic attributes of an individual to provide contextual information about a person and the situation they are facing, offering a more inclusive approach compared to traditional verification methods. 

"Access to the right data offers the possibility to improve current systems and innovate new ways to raise awareness for communities in need," said Eugene Kublanov, Principal, Advisory at KPMG. "Leveraging our Signals Repository, Everest Effect can tap into the most accurate, comprehensive data to more fully understand the individual impact after a crisis. Everest Effect and KPMG share in the mission to use technology ethically, and we look forward to our continued collaboration of helping organizations make intelligent decisions about how they support affected communities." 

Under the current relief supply chain, it takes 15 years on average for someone experiencing a crisis to recover financially. This happens because aid tends to drop off during the peak rebuilding phase of an individual's recovery timeline and the sector struggles to systematically verify requests and track claimed needs, resulting in 60% of in-kind donations being wasted. On top of this, it's estimated that $400 billion may have been lost to fraud by way of falsified claims for COVID-related unemployment benefits. 

"Whether it's unemployment fraud or disaster fraud, those in charge of making decisions on how aid is distributed need technology in place that can turn trusted data into actionable insights," said Naysa Mishler, CEO and Co-founder of Everest Effect. "The way we are harnessing multiple data sources allows us to focus on the individual and the context of their life so we can more fully realize what they need and when. Understanding the context of a person's experience and situation is the most essential factor in efficiently and equitably serving those in need and eliminating waste."

The Score is currently being used on the Everest Effect marketplace and consumed via APIs by for-profits, governments, and NGOs off their platform. Organizations can use the technology to make more informed decisioning around distribution of resources and future planning to build more effective crisis response systems and processes.      

AI for Good Foundation is working with Everest Effect to integrate the Score technology into its Intelligent Cities and Sustainable AI Policy initiatives. The collaboration will convene local businesses, nonprofits, academics, and city administrators to explore how AI technologies, like the Score, can be used to achieve community resilience. 

"We believe the most impactful path to achieving sustainable and equitable progress to some of the world's biggest problems is through equipping local leaders with the tools to drive effective change," said James Hodson, CEO of AI for Good Foundation. "Everest Effect's approach of contextualizing a crisis by understanding the individual is aligned with our philosophy and practice of using AI to translate smart data into intelligent action."

The Crisis Impact Score™ is available now for businesses, governments, nonprofits, and community-based organizations. Visit www.everesteffect.com/score/ for more information. 

About Everest Effect 
Everest Effect is the leading needs verification platform for crisis recovery. Through its machine learning technology, data platform and curated marketplace, Everest Effect speeds up crisis recovery by connecting real people with verified needs to individuals and organizations looking to make an impact. Since 2018, the company has fulfilled more than 8,000 verified requests for goods and services, supported more than 2,600 families, and ensured zero waste in donor purchases during disasters like Covid-19, the California wildfires, Hurricane Laura, and winter storm Uri. 

SOURCE Everest Effect

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