World Solve

Urban growth, migration, and climate change will outpace traditional master planning. The challenge is designing governance that can revise land use, service delivery, and infrastructure priorities continuously without becoming arbitrary. This becomes particularly difficult in post-conflict institutions, because public institutions must remain fair, resilient, and accountable while adapting to new risks.

Historical records increasingly exist in fragile digital formats that may outlive current software, vendors, and hardware. The unresolved problem is preserving public memory across decades of technological change. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Claims about quantum advantage often depend on narrow benchmarks or idealized assumptions. The challenge is creating reproducible measurements that identify when quantum systems deliver meaningful benefits over classical alternatives. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Many institutions cannot inventory where vulnerable cryptography is used across old software, embedded devices, archives, and vendor systems. The future challenge is completing secure migration before quantum-capable attackers can exploit long-lived encrypted data. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

As heat, flooding, drought, and erosion intensify, some communities will need to move. The challenge is designing relocation policy that protects land rights, livelihoods, identity, and consent rather than turning climate adaptation into forced displacement. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Governments will increasingly rely on automated systems to allocate benefits, flag risks, prioritize inspections, and recommend enforcement. The unresolved problem is creating governance structures that make these systems transparent, contestable, and accountable without disabling public service delivery. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Curb demand changes by hour and street, but regulations are often static and enforcement is inconsistent. Auctions, reservation systems, and fairness constraints could improve throughput while protecting accessibility and local commerce. The opportunity is intentionally human-scale: a cooperative, clinic, workshop, school, or municipal team could pilot it within one locality and measure outcomes before expanding. Mathematical modeling can help with preserve uncertainty, incentives, or resource constraints; entrepreneurship can turn a reliable workflow into a viable service.

Overfishing has collapsed several near-shore fish stocks critical to coastal livelihoods in Chile, and existing quota systems are poorly enforced due to limited monitoring of small-scale fishing fleets.

Germany has expanding agricultural frontiers bordering wildlife habitat where novel pathogens can jump species, but there is no routine, affordable genomic surveillance at these interfaces to catch spillover before human transmission begins.

Independent software developers and small studios can lose significant revenue to piracy networks that distribute their work without payment, and enforcement remains difficult and inconsistent across different countries. Protecting smaller creators specifically remains an underaddressed issue.

Realistic AI-generated video of fake news anchors delivering false information can be produced quickly and convincingly, and detection systems still struggle to flag this content before it spreads widely. Staying ahead of this format remains an unresolved media integrity challenge.

As AI tools become more capable of providing real-time answer suggestions, detecting this kind of undisclosed assistance during interviews or exams remains technically difficult. This creates growing concerns about the integrity of remote assessments.

Location-based data used by AI models can sometimes act as a proxy for race or income, indirectly leading to unfair lending or insurance decisions even without explicit discriminatory intent. Fully removing this hidden bias remains an unresolved technical and regulatory challenge.

Cell and gene therapies may deliver durable remissions but have complex safety profiles. Post-marketing registries and patient-reported outcome platforms can close knowledge gaps.

Cell and gene therapies may deliver durable remissions but have complex safety profiles. Post-marketing registries and patient-reported outcome platforms can close knowledge gaps.

Tailored biologics may require complex supply chains. Logistics-optimisation tools and modular manufacturing will be needed.

Citizens feel democracy is not delivering security or prosperity, driving support for radical solutions and coups. Civic-engagement platforms and institutional-performance dashboards can rebuild trust.

Land dispossession, discrimination, and limited service access undermine rights and livelihoods for indigenous communities. Rights-monitoring platforms and participatory land-governance tools are needed.

Large populations live in self-built housing without secure tenure or basic services. Slum-upgrading and legal-regularisation platforms can improve living conditions.

Economic growth has not been inclusive enough, leaving large groups in informal, low-paying work without safety nets. Targeted cash transfers and universal basic social protection floors could reduce extreme poverty.