"Big Data Climate Challenge" launches, as part of Secretary-General's 2014 Climate Summit
Global Pulse is pleased to launch the Big Data Climate Challenge with the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Team, as part of the 2014 Climate Summit to be held in September at UN Headquarters in New York.
The Big Data Climate Challenge seeks to highlight data-driven evidence to drive climate action, building public understanding of how Big Data can help show the economic implications of climate impact and opportunities to manage climate risks.
The Call for Submissions is now open on our website. Scientists, technologists and citizens from around the world are invited to submit recently implemented or published projects that use Big Data and analytics to address the real world impacts of climate change. Winners will be flown to the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014, and their projects will be featured at the Summit.
A Technical Advisory Board with high-profile experts from both the UN System and fields of Big Data, climate and sustainable development will evaluate submissions and help select the winning projects. Applications will be accepted until 1 June 2014.
2014 has already been a milestone year in climate action and Big Data, with the third and final installment of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report released in March, the White House’s new open data portal focused on climate and National Climate Assessment by the US Government’s Global Change Research Program this week.
The Secretary-General calls climate change the “defining issue of our time.” The 2014 Climate Summit will serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level to drive climate action. The goal of the Climate Summit is to catalyze ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience, and to mobilize political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.
Many of Global Pulse’s own research projects focus on problems related to climate change, for example understanding human behavior during floods in Mexico and monitoring fluctuating food prices caused by extreme weather in Indonesia. The Big Data Climate Challenge is an initiative that directly addresses climate change by sourcing the best ideas in the world to strengthen the case for climate action.
For more information, please visit our Big Data Climate Challenge homepage or contact Sara Cornish sara@unglobalpulse.org with any questions.
image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Creative Commons
