DUBLIN, Thursday October 25th, 2018 – Dublin will be one of 115 cities around the world taking action on climate change this Friday (26 October) at Trinity College Dublin, as part of ‘Climathon’.
Climathon, the award-winning 24-hour hackathon unites students, entrepreneurs, big thinkers, technical experts and app developers in tackling the defining climate challenges of their cities. The annual event is organised by EIT Climate-KIC’s, the EU’s largest public-private partnership addressing climate change through innovation, of which Trinity is a member.
City-level action is needed to address climate change at speed and scale. Cities are already contributing over 70 per cent of global carbon emissions and are growing rapidly, with 70 per cent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050. Together, cities hold the world’s biggest lever for slowing down global warming.
The Climathon at Trinity will assemble citizens, officials and businesses to create innovative solutions for Dublin’s transition to a Water Smart City with smarter urban water management.
Director of Trinity College Dublin’s Centre for the Environment, Dr. Quentin Crowley said: “Transitioning to a Water Smart City is a crucial and important step for Dublin. Climathon presents the perfect opportunity for us to look at innovative ways to make this transition as seamless as possible, so it’s exciting to think about what teams might come up with.”
Climathon, which had its first hackathon in the run up to the historic COP21 negotiations in Paris, has grown to be the biggest international climate change hackathon in world history.
In 2017, more than 100 cities in 44 countries across 6 continents hosted Climathons worldwide, with a total reach of 33 million people.
Kirsten Dunlop, CEO, EIT Climate-KIC said: “The recent IPCC report has thrown down the gauntlet to governments and cities across the world. The challenges of meeting a 1.5 degree target are so immense that it is difficult to comprehend the scale and scope of collective transformation required.
“We have ten years to set radical changes in motion definitively across all sectors and, most crucially, in our own minds and everyday choices.”
To be part of Climathon on Friday 26th October or to find further information about the event please see: https://climathon.climate-kic.org/en/dublin
