The 2022 Call for Code Global Challenge, an initiative to combat climate change with open-source-powered technology, is officially underway.
The competition was announced Tuesday morning by IBM, along with Call for Code creator David Clark Cause, charitable partner United Nations Human Rights, and the Linux Foundation.
"As the Global Challenge opens today, we’re excited to utilize our expansive platform to help people in need by calling on developers worldwide to innovate software that can mitigate and reverse the effects of climate change through sustainable solutions," David Clark, CEO of the David Clark Cause, said in a news release.
IBM is the parent company of weather.com and The Weather Company.
In its fifth year, Call for Code has brought together a half-million developers, students and problem-solvers from 180 nations.
The 2022 competition asks entrants to design and build an open-source solution in the cloud that includes one of the following:
- Improve the ability to measure, analyze or take decisive action on carbon emissions.
- Improve access to affordable and reliable clean energy.
- Improve supply chain transparency and traceability.
- Address issues of water scarcity and quality.
- Reduce volume and demand and encourage recycling of materials that create the biggest waste footprint, such as plastics, electronics, food and textiles.
"As the United Nations recently emphasized in their 2022 climate report, impactful sustainability actions are needed now to curb the worst consequences of climate change," IBM says on its Call for Code website. "Sustainability practices and solutions need to benefit all communities, but especially those communities that have been marginalized and polluted in the past. Technology is key, as it can provide effective, scalable solutions to address sustainability challenges."
Past winners say Call for Code allowed them to make their vision a reality.
"Yesterday, it was four of us dreaming, and today, we are doing something really meaningful at a global level," Chimegsaikhan (Chimka) Munkhbayar, head of sales and marketing in Asia for Agrolly, an app that supports small farmers and won Call for Code 2020, told weather.com in a previous interview.
IBM works with winning teams to incubate and deploy their solutions in the real world. The winning team also receives $200,000.
Last year's winner was an innovative water-quality monitoring device called Saaf Water. Other finalists included Green Farm, a platform designed to connect small farmers with consumers and help solve problems faced by community-supported agricultural organizations; Project Scavenger, an app that helps users safely dispose of e-waste; Honestly, an online browser extension to alert users to things like bad press on a brand they are shopping, provide relevant ratings aggregated from outside sources and list carbon footprint and supply chain data; and Plenti, an app to help prevent food waste at home.
Trashtag, a technology to verify, track, and reward waste removal in outdoor areas, took the top prize in the university category last year.
The deadline for 2022 entries is Oct. 31.
