Call summary :

Tech for Sustainability Campaign is a global initiative for students, researchers, startups and innovative individuals to leverage technology to solve real-world sustainability challenges and shape our future along with Siemens. Participate by choosing a challenge listed below and work on real problems by submitting your ideas.

Driving climate resiliency

Identifying site specific climate adaptation strategies for businesses

We face an increasing volume and intensity of severe climatic events, which pose risk to communities, our infrastructure, and supply chains globally. Investing sustainably means investing in resiliency. This requires proactive risk identification and management fueled by data.

As a focused financial services provider with deep industry and technology know-how, Siemens Financial Services (SFS) views climate mitigation and adaptation efforts as equally important to promoting sustainable development and long-term economic stability. These efforts aim to drive forward climate resiliency and our capacity to prepare for and respond to a changing world.

Similarly, we’d like participants in our challenge to build a tool to identify climate resiliency opportunities and adaptation measures businesses can take – specifically for their buildings – based on location-specific climate risk. A better understanding of both risk and solutions can enable companies to make investments aimed at supporting their businesses, communities and limiting future risk exposure.

While there are many data sources which track and document climatic events, the risk of future occurrence is not always well integrated into project planning and financial analysis. Even in cases where decision-makers leverage physical risk data, this information is often disconnected from an understanding of actionable measures that building owners can take in response. Interpreting and translating data on risk into practical actions can be challenging, especially for non-experts.

This is where your ideas and support come in:

We need your help to develop a software tool that brings together open-source datasets and code and provides insight into resilience and adaption measures mapped to locations worldwide. The solution should provide address or zip code specific results, tailored to user inputs as needed.

Participants will be asked to leverage public datasets and build a program in the code language of their choice, however Python or Julia is preferred. The source code should be delivered at the end of the project. Over the course of the challenge, our subject matter experts will be available to provide additional guidance as needed.

Let’s unleash the power of the crowd and tackle this problem together!

We believe that actionable insights fueled by data will drive climate resiliency and strengthen our capacity to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. Modeling climate risk and resiliency measures allows us to:
- Unlock new financing – A better understanding of effective climate adaption and resiliency measures can enable investments aimed at supporting communities and modernizing existing infrastructure.
- Inform portfolio analysis – Climate risk data may be integrated into investment analysis to facilitate risk management, ensuring our portfolio is robust in our changing environment.
- Prepare companies and cities – Deeper analysis of resource use, such as water and electricity, allows customers to protect and sustainably build critical facilities and supply chains. To address our challenges, we aim for a method that is not only effective but also easy to deploy. While there are existing models available in the market for manufacturing footprint calculation, many fall short of meeting the criteria of simplicity, reliability, and consistency.

We believe your solution will help Siemens, SFS and our customers build more resilient and sustainable businesses, with positive impact on economic productivity, health, and safety.

What’s in for you?

Win Prizes: EUR 60,000 total prize money

Multiply impact in real world challenges: Solve real problems together for a sustainable future

Participate in a Hackathon: Develop your ideas best

Pitch in front of top management: Show your solution to Siemens Management