Australian Aid Program Looking for Innovative Water Solution

Australian Aid Program Looking for Innovative Water Solution via    Water Abundance XPRIZE​

Scientists, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs and other creative minds are encouraged to compete as a team or individual. Registration for the Water Abundance XPRIZE closes on March 31 and is followed by a 17-month process of designing, testing and evaluating inventions with the winning team announced in Aug. 2018.

The reward for the best solution is $1.5 million.

Through innovationXchange — a division within DFAT tasked to identify, test and scale new solutions to intractable development challenges — the Australian aid program has helped develop a number of innovative aid solutions through ideas competitions.

DFAT’s challenge to solve issues of water shortage involves a 2.18 million Australian dollars ($1.7 million) investment, which includes funding the running of the competition, grand prize and five milestone prizes of $50,000 each. Because water science and engineering is not an area in which DFAT has the technical capability to identify and nurture a winning invention, XPRIZE and the Tata Group came in.

XPRIZE, which has won acclaim for its open competitions to solve major technology problems, in turn introduced DFAT to the Tata Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India that has been at the forefront of innovative and technological development through industries such as steel, power and teleservices.

Since the Water Abundance challenge has the potential to provide a large development impact, DFAT has big plans for the winner’s invention. “The grand prize winner will be announced in August 2018, after which DFAT intends to promote and trial promising technologies developed through the competition in our region,” DFAT’s spokesperson said.

A successful outcome will not just address Australia’s own aid goals in the Indo-Pacific region; it will play an important role in the global response to the Sustainable Development Goals.

“The Water Abundance XPRIZE will address lack of access to clean water for 6 billion people, encapsulated in Sustainable Development Goal 6,” explained DFAT’s spokesperson.

Source: Devex