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Blog

The Plastic Innovation Prize

On May 18, 2017 Dame Ellen MacArthur announced a $2 Million Plastic Innovation Prize to keep plastic out of our oceans, jointly sponsored by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation with the Prince of Wales’ Sustainability Unit and funded by philanthropist Wendy Schmidt. More

Industry Response to the Plastic Challenge

The American Chemistry Council is promoting the $2 Million Plastic Innovation Prize to keep plastic out of our ocean. More

Innovation: Next Generation Social [Problem-Solving] Networks

For earthDECKS [Distributed Evolving Collaborative Knowledge Systems] the swarm of interest in a problem previously seen as “too hard” shows that the right trigger mobilizes a crowd. Zann Gill predicts that crowdsourcing platforms will evolve into next generation social networks to support the emerging field of collaborative intelligence, turning social networks into problem-solving ecosystems. More

Using GIS for Problem-Focused Mapping

Using GIS for Problem-Focused Mapping

The WorldMap Platform

The WorldMap Platform is the largest open source collaborative mapping system in the world, with over 13,000 map layers contributed by thousands of users from Harvard and around the world. More

Ocean Debris Network (OD Net)

An Ocean Debris Network is emerging to address a problem that demands creative solutions across disciplines. More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain. Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25 tons of plastic particles in the oceans, most of them “micro plastics” measuring less than 5mm, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing. Millions of pieces of debris float in five large, subtropical gyres. More

Climate Change Interactive: Visual Modeling

earthDECKS promotes and connects Game*Changers, such as Climate Interactive, which builds interactive, scientifically rigorous tools to enable game-players to become game-changers by seeing new connections, playing out scenarios, and trying experiments based on different assumptions to see what works. These interactive simulation games were inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s World Game and address topics from climate change to clean energy to disaster risk reduction and resilience. More

Oceans: Measuring Planet Health

Ocean Health Index undertakes an ongoing, quantifiable assessment of the capacity of our oceans to deliver benefits and resources sustainably. The ocean is a revealing barometer of climate change as shown in weather visualizations. Analysis of global weather changes shows the strong impact of ocean health on climate. And the debris that now litters our oceans is a hazard not only to ocean wildlife, but to all life on earth. Project Kaisei focuses on the vortices created by plastic debris. More

Gaming the Future: Collaborative Intelligence

Collaborative intelligence is NOT the conventional view that collaboration is about being “nice,” agreeable to work with, sharing information, human ethics in teamwork — all good, but not collaborative intelligence. More