Culture

#Climathon 2015 - London challenges and prizes

24 hours is to create business models and apps that help cities respond to climate change

Climate-KIC’s Climathon - is this Thursday June 18th @ The Hub Westminster. There are still places available, to register to join go here. We are expecting between 50 - 70 bright minds participating. The itinerary includes short talks, break out groups, workshops and coaching. To see how the program for the day is taking shape see the London Climathon Schedule. The aim of the 24 hours is to create business models and apps that help cities respond to climate change. To do this we will kick off by presenting the challenges and data and then supporting the teams as they work over the 24 hours.

The Challenges

Theme

Challenge

Data

Organizations involved

Air Quality

Improve air quality in London and / or help people track and avoid it

UCL, London Datastore, open sensors

Liebreich Foundation, Open Sensors.io

Flex in the City (Energy)

How can we reduce London’s emissions through shifting 20% of peak demand, and increasing distributed solar, by 2020?

Low Carbon London

Energy Unlocked, Tempus, GLA

Waste reduction challenge

How schemes targeted at different layers of the waste hierarchy can be successful so long as stakeholders are engaged. (reduce>reuse> recycle> recover> dispose)

GLA's Foodsave scheme will be our case study for a reduce project

WRAP, GLA, Giles Wolf

Carboncoin reward app

link positive eco behaviours with rewards from Carbon Coin

Carbon Coin

The Prizes

The competition is in two rounds - the first ends at the end of the 24 hour hack - the best ideas will win prizes and go into the six month development phase up to COP21 - where the ultimate winners will be announced. The teams with the best ideas will be offered resources, support and mentoring to help kick start the business / app from Climate-KIC's Entrepreneur Program and with support from our partners. For certain challenges the partner organisation will work closely with the winning team.

The Liebreich Foundation Air Quality Prize

The Liebreich Foundation, in association with Climate-KIC and the London Clean Air Roundtable, is offering a special prize of £5000 to one or more ideas emerging from #Climathon2015 London which do most to address the issue of air quality. Ideas can be of any sort, though apps, data visualisations and communications tools will be preferred. London’s official air quality data is available under an Open Government license, and cheap and mobile air quality sensors are now on the market (or will be shortly). Yet there is a real challenge making Londoners aware of levels and impacts of air pollution, and the many things they can do to either mitigate pollution or protect themselves from it. The judging panel will be the same as the panel judging the Climathon. It is expected that the prize money will be spent further developing the winning solution or solutions, and many members of the London Clean Air Roundtable stand ready to mentor the winning team or teams.

Other prizes:

  • 80,000,000 Carboncoins **
  • Original artworks from the event

Logistics

  • Please note - there is no access to the building or event without first registering. Registration closes midnight on Wednesday
  • Please come with your laptops and ready for action. We will be providing refreshments throughout and three healthy vegetarian meals
  • The 24 hours will be run in a dynamic and flexible way. You are welcome to swap teams, change challenges and come and go as you please
  • Any questions contact Matt

We still have places for more participants so if you can think of others who may want to join please forward them a link to this page or register here. We are not just recruting coders but also designers, people with business experience and anyone who is keen to collaboratively apply our intelligence to find solutions to climate issues - many thanks for your support! **

More information on Carboncoin

Carboncoin is a revolution in payment technology, based on the blockchain, it aims to create potentially unlimited funding for supporting nature in addressing climate change.

Carboncoin has partnered with Climathon to offer half of one percent of the total circulation of coins to lucky winners on the day

Carboncoin is also offering 2 fortnight summer internships to take place in mid September as prizes to individuals showing particular enthusiasm and aptitude to assisting Carboncoin achieving its objectives. Full and part time paid contract work is on offer to the right individual(s)

We are looking for innovative ways to get the coin out into the world - one challenge is to design a system that allows individuals to claim or be rewarded coins for using apps which prove emission reducing behaviours. New ways/applications to detect emission reducing behaviours will also be highly regarded. NB: It is vital that any reward system be fully automated. image002