World Solve

If people live substantially longer, societies will need new models for work, learning, housing, dependency, and end-of-life care. Existing systems are not designed for decades of post-retirement life or multiple phases of dependency. The solution must produce useful coordination and accountability while minimizing collection of sensitive personal and behavioral data. 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.

If people live substantially longer, societies will need new models for work, learning, housing, dependency, and end-of-life care. Existing systems are not designed for decades of post-retirement life or multiple phases of dependency. The design must remain functional when standards, trade routes, data access, and diplomatic cooperation are unreliable. 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.

If people live substantially longer, societies will need new models for work, learning, housing, dependency, and end-of-life care. Existing systems are not designed for decades of post-retirement life or multiple phases of dependency. 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.

When personal memory archives exist solely in distributed cloud systems, sudden or gradual data loss can erase formative experiences without local backups. The challenge is building durable, verifiable, and accessible long-term personal memory infrastructure that survives corporate failure, format obsolescence, and account lapses. Solutions should remain affordable, user-controlled, and recoverable even decades later.

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.

Digitizing land records can improve access while also enabling new forms of fraud, corruption, and system failure. The challenge is designing registry governance that protects ownership claims, customary rights, and dispute resolution over decades. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Many critical systems, including in banking and government, still run on decades-old code that few current developers understand, and automated modernization tools remain unreliable for anything but simple cases. This leaves critical infrastructure dependent on shrinking expertise.

Video files, especially in high resolution, still require significant storage and bandwidth despite decades of compression research, and further meaningful improvements have become harder to achieve. This constrains streaming quality and cost, especially in areas with limited bandwidth.

Documents with rich formatting, fonts, or embedded content can still look different or break entirely when opened in different software or on different devices. A truly universal, faithful format remains elusive despite decades of digital document use.

Most software vulnerabilities trace back to common coding mistakes that better language design could prevent from the start. Despite decades of research, mainstream programming still makes these mistakes easy to make.

Over the next two decades, rising resistance in bacteria, fungi, and parasites risks undermining surgery, chemotherapy, and intensive care. Global surveillance networks, rapid diagnostics, and new antimicrobial development platforms are crucial to avert a post-antibiotic era.

Deforestation, wildlife trade, and dense urbanisation increase contact between humans and animal reservoirs, enabling novel pathogens to emerge. Planetary-health surveillance systems and adaptable vaccine platforms will be essential.

Rising stress, social isolation, and economic precarity will increase depression, anxiety, and cognitive disorders, especially among youth. Scalable digital therapeutics and integrated community mental-health ecosystems are needed.

AI tools will increasingly support diagnosis and triage, but biases and opaque models may harm patients. Transparent validation frameworks, audit trails, and clinician–AI training curricula will be key.

mRNA and vector-based technologies can shorten response times, but manufacturing capacity and regulatory agility must be built in advance. Global manufacturing networks and adaptive trial designs will matter.

Persistent symptoms after infections strain health systems and productivity, yet mechanisms are incompletely understood. Large longitudinal cohorts and mechanistic studies are needed to inform care pathways.

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.

Displaced populations will need continuity of care for chronic diseases and mental health. Portable health records and mobile-clinic platforms can help.

Bridges, tunnels, and rail lines built decades ago require expensive renovation at a time of fiscal pressure. Asset-condition mapping and lifecycle-finance tools can prioritise investment.

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.