The novel coronavirus has greatly impacted every aspect of daily life, and created new challenges for communities, industries and countries around the world. How can technology be used to find new solutions to current problems? IBM is working with the global developer community to find new solutions to help fight the pandemic now, and in the future. Through IBM’s Call for Code, a $30 million, five-year global challenge, IBM and our partners are working to unite developers to create applications powered by open source technology that can tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge is addressing the world's reaction to COVID-19 in addition to climate change; two pressing issues that have the power to compromise our health, our planet, and our survival.
In early March, IBM announced that the Call for Code Global Challenge would expand to address both climate change (the initial theme) and COVID-19. The team received overwhelming support and some exciting early ideas that could become tangible solutions to fight two of society’s biggest challenges. In a single day, over 1,000 developers around the world registered to participate. First responders, at-risk individuals, and coders are joining the challenge, sharing their experiences and collaborating on finding new solutions. Together with Creator David Clark Cause and in partnership with United Nations Human Rights and the Linux Foundation, IBM is leveraging the brains and innovation of developers, data scientists, and problem solvers to answer the Call.
From its inception, Call for Code was created to take on society’s most pressing issues. In the first two years of Call for Code, we had over 210,000 participants from 165 nations create over 8,000 applications focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief; and this year’s challenge is bigger than ever. IBM Code and Response has deployed Project Owl, the winning solution from Call for Code 2018, in regions recently affected by natural disasters, and is testing 2019 winner Prometeo, a cognitive platform that monitors the health of firefighters in real time while they fight natural disasters.
