Identification of Urban Resilient Water Solutions in India – Open Innovation Call

With a population poised to increase by 400 million by 2050, India is facing a huge challenge to meet the expected growth of its cities and urban infrastructure. The goal for this Open Innovation call is to engage innovators, companies and other relevant stakeholders who work with concrete solutions to address the water related challenges defined in selected cities in India.

Background to the Call

An important element in India’s growth outlook is its current urban transformation. India is yet to unlock the full growth potential of its urbanisation process and the existing urban infrastructure is not equipped to accommodate the coming dramatic growth of its cities. Addressing these issues is high on the agenda for the Government of India.

To address this critical situation, the Government of India has launched a bold, new initiative – the Smart Cities Mission Initiative. The programme aims to establish frameworks that can be replicated both within and outside the Smart Cities Mission alliance, catalysing the creation of similar smart cities in various regions and parts of the country. The Indian Central Government has committed INR 480 billion (equivalent to €6 Billion) in order to finance the mission, a figure that is conditional to equal funding from the state governments.

In order to provide concrete solutions to the identified problem, EIT Climate-KIC, Quercus Group and the Royal Danish Embassy are tasked by Nordic Innovation to identify innovative solutions though an Open Innovation Day (OID) in order to help improve urban resilient water solutions in cities in India, improve life quality for citizens and to adopt systemic thinking about circular water systems. The aim is to generate advantages for the local, urban environment in the cities of Bhubaneswar, Panaji, Shimla, Ghaziabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Purpose of the Open Innovation Call

With the planet’s second largest population at 1.3 billion and the expected growth to 1.7 billion by 2050, India finds itself unable to serve the vast majority of its population with safe, clean water.

The motivation behind the Open Innovation Day (OID) India is to utilize the concept of Open Innovation in Indian cities for the purpose of tackling the water challenges of urban sustainability. By doing so, selected Indian cities will become recipients of innovative water solutions from around the world that are tailor-made for each individual city. The Open Innovation Day plans to target the following cities: Bhubaneswar, Panaji, Shimla, Ghaziabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Each of the selected cities offer specific and unique qualities as an innovation ecosystem. At the same time, each city faces significant environmental challenges – challenges often associated with a metropolis – which vary significantly between settlements despite having a common theme. Given the scope of this project and the scale of environmental challenges within each city, not just in terms of the magnitude of the problem but also the number of people affected, we believe that the challenges require world-class solutions that OID has the potential to deliver through support from EIT Climate-KIC’s global presence and networks.

The OID Workshop Format

Selected solution owners will be invited to India in order to participate in a workshop tour to each of the selected cities and to meet senior city officials and private developers based in the cities. Through an inclusive and collaborative approach, the hope is to co-create relevant and innovative solutions for, and in collaboration with, the selected cities. Ideally, these solutions and approaches can further be replicated in other cities in India and in the region. With the participation of both city officials and innovative companies, this project will identify solutions to improve urban water management systems in cities in India, improve life quality for the citizens and adopt systemic thinking about circular water systems with the aim of generating advantages for the local, urban environment.

OID India is designed to also engage and connect a variety of local and relevant stakeholders, encourage growth in the local “green economy”, open a new channel for dialogue with the citizens of the city on green issues and help guide the green agenda to the heart of the concerned cities’ administration.

Further information on the Call

All solutions must be presented via the submission form found on the Call website by 22 April 2019. Submissions that are not sent via this route will not be considered.

The purpose of the submission form is to understand the nature of the product and/or service you wish to bring to one or more of the selected cities, as well as its relevance and impacts to urban water management processes. We highly recommend that you read the competition manual that you can find on the Call website, as it contains further information about:

• Competition objectives
• Specifications and criteria
• Important dates
• IPR and legal details
• The structure of the process and how it will be managed
• The competition partners and prizes

For further information and questions concerning the competition, please contact Peter Vangsbo, Nordic Business Developer, EIT Climate-KIC, peter.vangsbo@climate-kic.org.