Skip navigation
Climate Action Through Innovation
Video

Climate Action Through Innovation

Resilience – Episode 4

Microsoft, 2021


Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Eye Opening
  • Visionary

Recommendation

Part of Microsoft’s “Societal Resilience” series, “Climate Action Through Innovation” examines how data collection at the global and local levels builds community resilience to climate change. Air pollution may have declined in recent decades, but still disproportionally affects people living in relative poverty. Microsoft’s Project Eclipse coordinates with communities to monitor air quality and address how it contributes to inequity. To prevent worsening quality of life in poor countries, Microsoft’s Project Zerix aims to reduce electronic waste, which poisons people’s water and soil.

Summary

Microsoft’s Planetary Computer gives local conservation advocates access to big data about climate change.

To address a complex problem like climate change, innovators must create technology that is “multipurpose, and adaptable to different scenarios.” To solve a problem, one must identify it, and observe how it impacts people over time at the local and the global level. In addition to satellite data, low cost, local sensors can collect data on air quality on the ground. 

The challenge to meaningful change is to build speed, capacity and computing power to assess transformation in real time. Microsoft...

About the Speaker

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation that produces computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.