United Nations’ innovation initiative on big data, Global Pulse, is partnering with Western Digital to launch the “Data for Climate Action” challenge.
Data for Climate Action is an open innovation challenge using data science and big data from the private sector to fight climate change. Global Pulse is encouraging applications from data scientists, researchers, and innovators worldwide. Proposals should be submitted to the DataForClimateAction.org website by 10 April 2017.
The challenge will target three areas relevant to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal on climate action (SDG 13): climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and the linkages between climate change and the broader 2030 Agenda. At the end of the challenge, original research papers and tools will be produced to show how data-driven innovation can help make decisions and create solutions on the ground to fight climate change.
This initiative is supported by the Skoll Global Threats Fund, as well as companies from various industries and countries as data providers. The challenge will allow researchers to gain unprecedented access to national, regional, and global datasets, as well as tools to support their research. The data is anonymised and aggregated to protect privacy.
Companies contributing data for the challenge include:
- BBVA Data & Analytics, a financial data analytics company
- Crimson Hexagon, an enterprise social media analytics company
- Earth Networks, a weather and lightning sensor network operator
- Nielsen, a global measurement and analytics company
- Orange, a global telecommunications provider
- Planet, an earth-imaging satellite network operator
- Plume Labs, an environmental data sciences company
- Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automation
- Waze, a free, real-time community-based traffic and navigation app
On top of that, researchers may apply to receive cloud-computing support from Microsoft, and visual analytics support from Tableau.
Selected researchers for the challenge will have four months to conduct their research. A diverse panel of experts in climate change and data science will evaluate final submissions based on their methodology, relevance, and potential impact. Winners will be announced in November of 2017.
