Edinburgh is one of 115 cities around the world taking action on climate change today as part of EIT Climate-KIC’s annual Climathon – the award-winning 24-hour hackathon that unites students, entrepreneurs, big thinkers, technical experts and app developers in tackling the defining climate challenges of their cities.
City-level action is needed to address climate change at speed and scale. Cities are already contributing over 70 per cent of global carbon emissions and are growing rapidly, with 70 per cent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050. Together, cities hold the world’s biggest lever for slowing down global warming.
Teams hosted by local authorities, universities and NGOs from across the world including Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Sydney, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London will bring people together to solve local climate challenges – from sustainable food in Paris to air pollution in Coventry to waste-management in Lagos and smart mobility in Shanghai.
Edinburgh is embarking on a major urban redevelopment, investigating how to use data as part of its people-focused transformation. This is part of a broader drive to involve residents in shaping a 2050 vision for the city.
City officials and businesses have identified they’ve plenty of “system facts” (how and where people move around the city centre), but too few about how people experience the city centre’s public spaces. This Climathon challenge, led by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI), will bring together Edinburgh residents with city and data experts to explore how data and information on how people’s experience of the city centre can help Edinburgh become a clean, connected and thriving place to live.
ECCI supports a host of Scottish start-ups through its partnership with Climate-KIC, including IndiNature, which has created a 100% natural, hemp-based building construction system, and Carbogenics, which recycles coffee cups into materials that can be used in anaerobic digestion and horticulture.
Last year a Climathon team in the UK developed a wearable device called ‘Co-Pilot’, initially aimed at cyclists providing real-time information on connected vehicles around them while another group devised an accommodation search engine enabling the user to determine their ideal area to live – based on sustainable transport provisions.
Other solutions developed in previous years have included a Cork-based transport app that awards citizens discounts in local stores based on the carbon savings they make and sustainable drainage systems to avert floods in Manchester.
Professor Andy Kerr, Executive Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) said: “ECCI is delighted to be hosting the Edinburgh Climathon and bringing this global, world-changing movement to our home city.
“We’re committed to helping Edinburgh meet its 2050 aspirations by using data-driven and low carbon solutions to create a clean, connected and thriving city.”
Climathon, which had its first hackathon in the run up to the historic COP21 negotiations in Paris, has since grown to be the biggest international climate change hackathon in world history.
In 2017, more than 100 cities in 44 countries across 6 continents hosted Climathons worldwide, with a total reach of 33 million people.
Winning Climathon 2017 teams from across the UK were invited to present their ideas to Minister of Climate Change and Clean Growth Claire Perry earlier this year.
Kirsten Dunlop, CEO, EIT Climate-KIC said: “The recent IPCC report has thrown down the gauntlet to governments and cities across the world. The challenges of meeting a 1.5 degree target are so immense that it is difficult to comprehend the scale and scope of collective transformation required.
“We have ten years to set radical changes in motion definitively across all sectors and, most crucially, in our own minds and everyday choices.”
Mark Watts, executive director, C40, a key partner of EIT Climate-KIC said: “For more than a decade, mayors of the world’s greatest cities have been working together to deliver the boldest possible climate action to help create the sustainable, low carbon and prosperous cities of the future. But they can’t do it alone. The solutions to the climate crisis will be forged in cities, by citizens, start-ups, community groups, families and neighbours.
“It is crucial to find new and innovative ways to connect these citizens with each other and with city halls. The EIT Climate-KIC Climathon offers an innovative approach to deliver that and ensure new ideas and commitment to a better future for the next generation will be nurtured by mayors, city leaders and businesses.
“Only by working together will we deliver on the highest ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement.”
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