XR prize challenge: fight climate change

The XR Prize Challenge: Fight Climate Change is a global competition harnessing AR and VR (XR) solutions to help fight climate change. It is hosted by AWE, the producer of global in-person and online XR events, and the world’s most impactful XR community. AWE is inviting submissions from teams and individuals, and especially collaborations between XR technologists and climate change experts from around the world to compete for a $100,000 cash prize awarded to the best submission that demonstrates a creative, functional, and and impactful XR-based solution to help humanity in our fight against climate change in these 4 categories:

REPLACE – Replacing Wasteful Material Practices

VISUALIZE – Visualizing The Causes & Impacts Of Climate Change

EDUCATE – Educating About Solutions To Climate Change

OPTIMIZE – Optimizing Design & Execution Of Climate Solutions

The challenge

Climate change is one of the most urgent and long-term threats to life as we know it, and deserves our attention as a species, as professionals, and as technology experts. While the causes and effects of climate change are understood intellectually, they are difficult to grasp viscerally or emotionally because they seem so disconnected from our daily lives and behaviors. One of the biggest challenges in raising awareness of the impacts of climate change is that it’s hard to fight a threat you can’t see.

Additionally, while there are communities and communication platforms for those who wish to address climate change, these forums are often not as powerful as immersive solutions for educating people through direct and personal experience.

Climate change subject matter experts and entrepreneurs struggle to inspire people and policy-makers to take action. Finally, engineers and other professionals need spatially immersive tools to help improve and optimize design and execution for solutions to fight climate change.

The opportunity

XR, a technology that encompasses virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, is the ultimate tool to visualize information and generate empathy through spatial experiences. In recent years, XR has had a positive impact on the world thanks to its potential to mitigate climate change. Whether by reducing the need to travel, reducing manufacturing and product waste, or even reducing the need for real estate spaces, XR technology is helping numerous industries fight climate change. But the XR industry can and should do much more!

XR’s strength is to help simulate and visualize the invisible and make the problem of climate change personal to every individual. It can help people see and feel the effects on their own lives, engage with other like-minded citizens, and prompt them to take action against it. It can help professionals make the most effective decisions in their fight to develop solutions that address climate change.

Fighting climate change is not only a necessity for survival; it’s also one of the biggest economic opportunities in the next few decades.

Dates:

October 20, 2022 – Competition Open For Concept Submissions
December 31, 2022 – Concept Submission Deadline
April 16, 2023 – MVP (minimum viable product) Submission Deadline
May 1, 2023 – Finalists Announced
June 1, 2023 – winners announced

Contestants must be adult individuals or teams formed or led by any adults around the world.

Submissions will be judged on their creativity, functionality, and impact.