The new XPRIZE competitions focus on creating clean water and preventing violence against women. XPRIZE aims to make solutions for the world’s most taxing issues (Photo via XPRIZE)
It's contest season! For its latest set of contests, the XPRIZE nonprofit looks to tackle some of our biggest issues: clean water and violence against women. The first competition is the Water Abundance XPRIZE, which aims to harvest clean water from the air using renewable resources. Competitors will have to create a device that gathers a minimum of 2000 liters of fresh water per day from the air and it all has to be done with renewable energy. For an added challenge, the cost has to be two cents per liter of water. The competition will take place over the span of two years, which includes five months for registration, seven months for creating the device, and twelve months for testing and judging from a panel of experts.
Registration is open to teams around the world and closes March 31, 2017. The top five teams will be announced at the end of January 2018 and the winner will be announce in August. $1.75 million is prize money is up for grabs.
Anu & Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE is the second competition. It wants to build a discreet system that allows women to alert authorities and the community if they’re in danger. Participants will have to use technology to create a system that autonomously and inconspicuously sends out emergency alerts along with sending the information to “community responders.” It has to do all this in 90 seconds or less and only cost less than $40 annually. It also has to work in situations where there’s low-connectivity. The competition takes place over 20 months with four months for registration, six months for development, and ten months to test the solutions and judging by a panel.
Registration is open from now until the end of February 2017. The winning team will receive a total prize of $1 million. The contests were announced at a United Nations Day reception held in New Delhi, by XPRIZE CEO Marcus Shingles. Both competitions sound like they will lead to innovative results. Hopefully, the competing teams can come up with solutions that will be viable in the future and get us one step close to solving these global issues.
XPRIZE is the world’s leader in creating and managing competitions with the goal of solving humanity’s biggest issues, such as world hunger and pollution. XPRIZE was launched in India to help promote and create a more diverse ecosystem along with encouraging people to directly address problems they face by becoming part of the solution.
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