2025

OpenInnovation – Climate and Water

  • OpenInnovation – Climate and Water

    Flooded street.

    Challenge 4

    Climate Resilient and Socially Inclusive Neighbourhoods

    Catapult Projects, logo.
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    Catapult Projects is a design studio that applies a democratic design approach focused on diversity, inclusion and creative co-creation with citizens to strengthen local neighbourshoods. Catapult has partnered with Technology Leaving No One Behind – an initiative focused on making inclusion and accessibility a natural part of engineering at DTU.

    A long-neglected neighbourhood faces the dual pressures of deep-rooted social issues and increasing climate-related flooding. A multi-year initiative has been set up to explore how inclusive, democratic design methods can drive both environmental resilience and meaningful social transformation.

    Technology Leaving No One Behind.

  • OpenInnovation – Climate and Water

    Rocky coast.

    Challenge 3

    Rethinking Co-existence of Floating Offshore Energy and Nature

    DTU Aqua, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, logo.
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    DTU Aqua, Denmark’s largest marine research institution, presents a challenge in collaboration with EU sister institutions under the NID4OCEAN initiative. The EU has set the ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 and has also taken a world-leading position on biodiversity, aiming to halt biodiversity loss by protecting 30% of European seas.

    Expanding protected areas and offshore renewables will require more than “business as usual”—which is why NID4OCEAN has been tasked by the European Commission with identifying novel ideas for nature-inclusive designs (NiDs) for future floating offshore wind farms in European waters.

    4 Ocean, logo.

  • OpenInnovation – Climate and Water

    View of the tail of a whale.

    Challenge 2

    Stewards of the Ocean

    Danish Shipping & DFDS, logos.
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    Marine ecosystems are being transformed by pressures we barely understand. Unlike terrestrial environments, which have benefited from centuries of scientific study, our understanding of the ocean remains limited and uneven. Marine ecosystem knowledge gaps have a significant impact on the quality of decision-making and the speed at which society can counter biodiversity loss. Marine environments often remain a data desert, forcing policymakers to choose between inadequate protections or disruptive bans. Could shipping contribute to changing this situation?

    Den Danske Maritime Fond, logo.

  • OpenInnovation – Climate and Water

    CARE Denmark - water in refugee camp.

    Challenge 1

    Transforming Water Access in Dadaab Refugee Camp

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    CARE Danmark is a green aid organisation working with a focus on climate, innovation and market-based solutions to identify, test, and scale locally driven climate solutions that benefits the most climate vulnerable populations in the Global South.

    Globally, climate change escalates humanitarian needs while the past decades’ level of public humanitarian aid is on rapid decline. This calls for new approaches that reduces dependency on public funds and instead build on market-based approaches to mobilize private capital to drive humanitarian impacts at scale.

    Fonden for Entreprenørskab.
Link to home page.

OpenInnovation is Copenhagen’s flagship student innovation challenge, bringing over 120 students, researchers, and sustainable innovation enthusiasts together with innovation experts and key actors in the Danish ecosystems.

Contact

Sara Dømler
Project Manager
sardera@dtu.dk