BANGKOK, Thailand - Seventeen innovations from around the world have won the Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) for their disruptive and cutting-edge technologies to build communities’ resilience against the threats of climate change in South Asia.

The winning innovators will receive the CIC grant funding from a pool of US$2 million, to pilot their solutions in the seven countries of South Asia over a period of 8 months.

Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) received over 238 applications from 26 countries through its CIC applications platform that responded to a global call based on resilience needs identified across South Asia region, focusing on partnerships, applicability and scalability of innovative solutions. The thematic areas of the CIC are climate information and analytics, community-level early warning system, climate-smart agriculture, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), resilient infrastructure, nature based solutions (NbS) for adaptation, and risk financing solutions.

The CIC has received solutions spanning across cutting-edge technologies – from the Internet of Things (IoT) and deep-learning model to automatize land-use and smart farming to digital systems for decision support. They are all aimed at meeting the needs of the target countries’ most vulnerable sectors including agriculture, water and transport.

The Climate Innovation Challenge is part of a 5-year project called “Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CARE) for South Asia.” The CARE project is a partnership between ADPC, Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES), and the World Bank. The Program for Asia Resilience to Climate Change, a trust fund administered by the World Bank and funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), has made US$3.5 million available to ADPC to identify and pilot innovations to reduce climate risk and build climate resilience of communities vulnerable to such risks and extremes.

The CIC aims to identify and pilot innovations to reduce climate risk and build climate resilience of communities vulnerable to such risks. It will promote innovation in South Asia Region (SAR) through award of grants, matchmaking and pilot-testing to eligible and qualifying innovators.

The applications went through an extensive selection process, that included detailed challenge formulation, challenge call and an evaluation by an independent jury of experts. The winning Innovators are selected based on demonstrated technology, ability to execute, innovation and fit to needs.

For more information on the CIC and CARE for South Asia project, please visit www.adpc.net/cic or contact:

Grants Management Team

innovationgrants@adpc.net