Innovations

Partnership, Applicability and Scalability of Innovations and Technologies for Climate Resilience in South Asia

Sixteen 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 threat of climate change in South Asia. From the Internet of Things (IoT) and deep-learning model to automatized land-use, smart farming and digital systems for decision support in climate information and analytics, the winning solutions are all aimed at meeting the needs of the target countries’ most vulnerable sectors including agriculture, water and transportation.

Oy Arbonaut provides technological solutions for natural resource management. In Nepal, they will pilot the ProMS platform and its functionalities by developing a GIS web interface as well as a mobile application to provide local farmers in Nepal with Agro-Met Innovative Advisory Services (AMIAS) and build food security of the farming communities.

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources has developed the Irrigation and Climate Advisory Services (ICAS), an automated system supported by Artificial Intelligence and algorithms that integrates complex remotely sensed, field research, and citizen science (citizen observed weather parameters) data. The integrated data is then converted to useful information and climate advisories in local languages for farmers in Pakistan.

The Small Island Geographic Society’s Heyli is a mobile application that utilizes citizen science and crowd sourcing to gather data on coastal erosion and flooding in the Maldives. The pilot application aims to implement a measurable monitoring system and calculate the extent to which an island is affected by coastal erosion and flooding over a period of time. The data is then used to develop end-products such as maps and statistics to support development planning and further research.

The Alliance for Appropriate Technology Exchange will deploy a three-part sub-modules system integrated with ICT applications i.e (i) Smart Vertical Farming Module (SVFM) , (ii) rainwater harvesting module and (iii) solar module for smart vertical farming and improve the productivity of urban and semi urban farming in Sri Lanka.

The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) will deploy A near-real time monitoring of road and power infrastructure using advanced geospatial datasets with the help of crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence via android application and associated (Climate Resilient Infrastructure for Social Transformation and Adaptation) Dashboard in Bangladesh and Nepal. The pilot is intended to support the decision makers in addressing risk information gaps to improve community level climate resilience through risk sensitization.

Carthago will deploy its Tidal River Water Custodian, a decision-making framework on resilient and adaptive livelihoods to be deployed in Bangladesh. The pilot includes a set of tools and methods that allows diverse mapping of local communities and their vulnerability profiles and their inclusion in the formal decision support processes.

CropIn Technology will deploy their SmartFarm, a tailored advisory dissemination system through an ICT platform with mobile and web interfaces. The platform would enable smallholder farmers to have access to knowledge and information on sustainable best practices as well as curated, timely, and automated weather advisories in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

NAXA Pvt. Ltd will deploy their Household Level Risk Assessment Tool, a customizable data collection digital system that can assess household-level vulnerability and risk factors (using a mobile application and a web application) for evidence-based decision support and to plan effective risk financing strategies in Nepal.

Seoul National University is deploying an integrated pest management platform (SPMP) in Bangladesh that provides seamless climate information, ranging from high-resolution gridded climate change scenario, seasonal forecast, weather forecast, to mechanistic modeling platform for pests and diseases. The SPMP comprises of three key information components to make pest management decisions possible: (i) UniDform (Universal Downscaling Platform for Climate Information Applications); (ii) GMP3 (Generic Modular Platform for Plant Pests); (iii) IPM (Integrated Pest Management).

Zephyr Consulting Limited will pilot the SLAMDAM-technology, a low-cost hardware technological solution to enhance resilience against floods. The movable water-filled flood barrier, will be deployed in Pakistan where there are flooding risks and therefore improve resilience to flooding risks.

Geoneon develops solutions to anticipate the impact of climatic disasters through deep-learning model that automatizes land-use segmentation on satellite imagery using convolutional Neural Network (CNN). In Bhutan, they will support a district administration to provide an overview of the infrastructures, the extent of hazard prone areas and the vulnerability of infrastructures to multi-hazards that allows for informed decisions to implement mitigation and monitoring measures.

Tarayana Microfinance Pvt Ltd (TMF) will deploy its climate risk financing solution and catalyze Bhutan’s financial institutions to make small loans for climate risk financing available to remote, vulnerable mountain communities and their members, especially women smallholder farmers and pastoralists.

University of Salford’s THINKlab will pilot a set of cloud-based digital services using “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model for local and national government agencies in Sri Lanka to collaborate in building local community resilience. The MOBILISE 3.0 is a cloud-based risk information space that allows local councils or local disaster management committees to capture and maintain their local intelligence on exposure, vulnerability and potential hazards.

Led by the Curtin University, a consortium of public and private partners will deploy the ADOPT (Advocating available climate-smart technologies, Demonstrating the most appropriate technology, Omitting misinformation about climate-smart technology, and Putting peer pressure for Technology adoption) model (based on Nudge Theory) to incentivize farmers to adopt climate-smart technologies in the irrigation system.

Pro Nature Alliance will pilot their Sustainable Agriculture Technology (SAT), a nature-based hardware solution customized to the Pakistani context. It combines three technologies backed by climate smart practices. SAT is a combination of (i) customized raise bed maker; (ii) organic mulcher; and (iii) precision planter to support low cost, water conserving, organic farming practices in Pakistan.

A consortium of Stonestep TFD Pvt. Ltd and Practical Action will deploy the Parametric Flood Insurance for Climate Vulnerable Agriculture in Western Nepal. The parametric index is designed using historical flood data, satellite data and socio-economic data and the insurance product generated would protect smallholder farmers against losses to agriculture resulting from severe flooding.