Today’s world is increasingly affected by numerous unprecedented environmental challenges and disasters that detrimentally impact the lives of millions nationally and worldwide. It’s easy to feel powerless in such situations and believe that little can be done. Take control by crafting solutions to these and related problems at the Climate and Food Security Solutions Day, which is a unique event designed to tackle these pressing local and global climate change & food security issues head-on.

Who should attend: 

• All are welcome! We encourage WashU students with an interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, science and/or engineering, sustainability solutions, policy, community development, and social work and public health to participate.

Teams will work to create solutions while competing for prizes alongside like-minded peers and colleagues.

Register and join us for a day of innovation and collaboration!

Lunch and snacks will be provided. 

Event Outline:

1. Arrive at the event and organically form teams. Teams do not need to be formed ahead of time as participants can organically form teams with other participants on the event day.
2. Ideate and coalesce on a climate and/or food security problem. Use of public datasets and sources for formulating solutions are allowed and encouraged.
3. Research problem and proposed solution: problem scope, reference to prior work, solution feasibility, supporting data, required tools, and solution impact.
4. Work towards realization: mock-ups, pipelines, alpha builds, etc.

Programming skills are welcome but are not a prerequisite, making this event accessible to all who are passionate about making a meaningful impact.

Problem and Solution examples:

1. Analyze St. Louis City population data and identify grocery store locations to visualize food deserts.
2. Develop an app that tracks climate change policy in city, state, and or the federal governments so that constituents know about change and action.
3. Conceptualize local food redistribution networks that connect food surplus from businesses, restaurants, and individuals with organizations that can distribute it so that it is not wasted.
4. An urban heat island effect study using open-source satellite data and work towards mitigation techniques such as green roofs.
5. Create a multimedia campaign that can educate the public about the links between food type consumption with related climate change impacts, and possible effects on food security.
6. Design cookbooks that utilize climate-friendly ingredients to create scrumptious recipes with stunning artwork and presentation. Information on the carbon footprint for each dish, sustainability, where the ingredients were sourced could also be included.
7. Craft possible solutions for more climate-friendly food distribution that considers traffic data, population-density, and use of energy-efficient vehicles.

Note that these examples are illustrative of the kinds of problems and solutions that teams could work on – they are not definitive. Individual teams will be interested in developing their own solutions.

Judging Criteria for all Solutions:

1. Impact on climate change and/or food security
2. Creativity and innovation
3. Sustainability and resource conservation
4. Feasibility
5. Data and research integration
6. Demonstrated progress (mock-ups, pipelines, alpha builds, etc.)
7. Presentation and communication
8. Interdisciplinary approach
9. Education and awareness