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ITU Telecom Young Innovators competition seeks solutions in
tackling climate change
3rd Challenge in 2014 series focuses on smart cities and climate change
Geneva, 28 August 2014 – ITU
Telecom World Young Innovators Competition has launched a
Challenge on Smart Cities and Climate Change in partnership with the World
Health Organization (WHO), seeking innovative ideas on how information and
communication technologies (ICT) can help smart cities mitigate or slow down
the effects of climate change, in particular in the area of global health.
Two winning entries will be showcased at
ITU Telecom World 2014,
the leading platform for debate, knowledge-sharing and networking for the
global ICT community, in Doha, Qatar, 7-10 December 2014.
The Challenge calls for young people
around the world to work together on concepts for new and innovative social
start-ups within the field of smart cities to help future communities adapt
to or reduce climate change. This might include, for example, new
technologies, novel combinations of existing technologies, services and
systems, physical devices such as smart grids, software such as big data
processing, or services such as community building programmes.
Following the close of the competition on 7 October, two finalists will
be selected to join ITU
Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December, where they will pitch
their ideas before industry leaders and national governments, participate in
workshops, benefit from a year of ongoing mentorship, and win up to USD 5000
in seed funding.
“Extreme weather conditions, epidemics, outbreaks of infectious diseases
and air pollution exacerbating non-communicable diseases are examples of how
climate change is affecting the health of people around the world,” said ITU
Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré. “ICTs can provide solutions to deal
with these situations. This Challenge can entice socially conscious young
innovators to find solutions to tackle climate change by developing smart
cities that will help reduce emissions, improve economic sustainability and
promote innovative use of green technologies.”
Dr Touré noted that it is vital to give young people an opportunity to
engage with these key issues and work together as a community, as they
will be the ones living with the negative effects of climate on health for
generations to come. “Developing the next generation of businesses and
technologies to deal with climate change is something we need to do today,
rather than tomorrow,” Dr Touré said.
This Challenge is the third in the Young Innovators Competition 2014,
open to young people aged between 18 and 30 the world over. Compared to
former Challenges, which targeted existing start-ups, Challenge-3 is the
first co-creation challenge in the 2014 series, where applicants from around
the world submit seed ideas and work together to discuss, exchange ideas and
elaborate their contributions to a concept. These are honed and developed
further under the guidance of expert facilitators over the dedicated
crowdsourcing platform at
ideas.itu.int. The ideas with the greatest potential will be
identified and further refined into concepts, before the final two winners
are selected to join ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha. The deadline for
submission is 7 October 2014 at 23:59 CEST (21:59 UTC).
For more information, please contact:
Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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