The impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology can help, and IBM is making an effort to prepare for change by helping in the development of new generations of programmers who will be able to apply their skills to the most critical problems created by the climate crisis: water and air pollution, hunger and human health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want to build new skills to carry forward into your professional career, meet a worldwide community of innovators at 2021 IBM Global Challenge<\/a>. Make your mak as part of a transformative solution that effectively combats climate change<\/a>; the time is now!<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t IBM is part of the 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge, based on the 17 Substainable Development Goals<\/a> of the UN. This is a worldwide initiative that asks teams to develop solutions to change our planet’s life – and your own life too! <\/p>\n\n\n\n The scale of the involved community is huge: over 400,000 developers in 179 Countries have participated, creating in excess of 15,000 applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Participate in a team, envisage a solution, and compete to have a chance to win $200,000 and receive comprehensive support to see your solution deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Call for Code initiative offers you the opportunity to build and contribute to sustainable, open-source technology projects<\/a> that address social and humanitarian issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Call for Code is different from other tech for good initiatives, in that the top-rated solutions are realised and deployed to make a tangible difference in communities with the greatest need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IBM has promoted this initiative consistently – this year marks the fourth edition – and continues to provide the impetus to push it forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What are you waiting for? Be part of the fun, choose the type of involvement that is right for you, and build skills while creating meaningful change! The simplest way to get involved with Call for Code is by forming a team to compete in the Global Challenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If your current schedule does not allow you to be part of a team, you can still help by contributing code to existing open source projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Competing in a global challenge offers every participant a huge bonus: understanding how every single step of a large project is realised. This builds on a variety of individual competencies and broadens your overall perspective. Any good staff member might be the source of a winning solution! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Open-Source, community-driven environments provide a strong foundation for every digital project today. Every international project draws on a solid network of communities and components to maximum advantage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on strong foundations, robust environments can easily be developed through a rich infrastructure such as IBM\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To win is the ultimate goal of every competitor, and this is also true of the Call For Code Global Challenge<\/a> 2021, but broadened horizons are an important take-away for every participant. Add to that the chance offered to every participating developer – international exposure and visibility, whether as a winner or simply from participating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agrolly won the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge. Their solution was built by a group of Pace University students with diverse backgrounds and experience from Taiwan, Brazil, Mongolia, and India. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Agrolly aims to fill the information gap for farmers with fewer resources available to them, so that they can make more educated decisions, obtain necessary financing, and improve their economic outcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Using IBM Cloud Object Storage<\/a>, IBM Watson Studio<\/a>, IBM Watson Assistant<\/a>, and The Weather Company<\/a> technologies, the platform provides a full-service solution to execute climate risk assessments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The platform features a long-term rainfall forecast, which is tested periodically for increased accuracy. Additionally, crop water requirements sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are tailored for the location of each farmer, type of crop, and stage of the farm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Agrolly also provides a forum module allowing farmers to exchange information and solutions and allows text and picture uploads. Finally, the Agrolly platform includes crop-risk algorithms allowing risk assessments to be carried out by small farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On our webinar to introduce the 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge<\/a>, Georges-Henri Moll, distinguished Data Scientist at IBM, and Xavier Rey-Robert, Developer Advocate at IBM, demonstrate how to view open data in a Node.js dashboard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In their example, they show how to locate polluted waters, and Xavier Rey-Robert explains how to build a Node.js dashboard for an earthquake alert system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These tutorials are taken from the starter kits for the 2021 Call for Code. If you are curious to learn more, or to understand how to take full advantage of this opportunity, we advise you not to miss it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is estimated that pproximately 9 percent of the global population suffers from hunger. Much of the world\u2019s food is grown by small-scale, independent farms and distributed through local community cooperatives that sell the surplus produce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These co-ops are a central point for quality control, deliveries, and enabling food commodity markets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, co-ops face a myriad of logistical challenges to get the right food to the right places with minimal time and cost. A global organizational effort is needed to forge a new, comprehensive supply chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can technology solve the problem? The answer is Zero Hunger<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many processing areas suffer from a high percentage of raw and processed food becoming unusable. A better management system could reduce the percentage of wasted food in all production stages to zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, helping the cultivation process could result in more crops being harvested, thus giving the community better access to food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By bringing the paper ledgers of food co-ops online, communities can harness data insights from their environment to achieve better crop resilience and higher overall yield, creating sustainable food production systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To improve access to nutritious food in local communities, especially those suffering from acute hunger, co-operative systems can be digitized and enhanced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By aggregating and analyzing market, transportation, demand, horticultural, and environmental data, co-ops can optimize productivity, reduce overheads, and decrease volatility in the supply chain of farming communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s imagine your team has chosen to focus on the Zero-Hunger solution. What is your team required to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n One method that can help crops grow better is known as \u201cprecision agriculture\u201d. This is a paradigm imported from revolutionary industry-production schemes where all production phases are kept under control through sensing devices, correct data recording, extraction of information from data, and overall control of the harvesting flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Zero Hunger project, IBM suggests a flow reengineering where the sensors are hi-res cameras, the infrastructure is determined by a communication platform, and data processing is hosted on the cloud. A traditional phone also takes pictures: very complex technology is not needed, nor is it usually available in such communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, here are the three basic technologies with their proper names:<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Challenge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Pillars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Agrolly<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Technology at the service of the Planet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Digging deeper into the problem: Zero Hunger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
IBM Technologies used in this Challenge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n