World Solve

Bacteria are evolving resistance faster than pharmaceutical companies are creating new antibiotics to fight them. Left unresolved, common infections could become deadly again within a few decades.

Many fast-growing cities in arid regions are outpacing the water systems built to serve them, leading to shortages and rationing. Solving this needs both new infrastructure and smarter long-term water planning.

Many major rivers and aquifers are being pumped or diverted faster than rainfall can replenish them, threatening long-term water security. Without better management, some regions may simply run out of accessible fresh water.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term, and much of it leaks unnoticed from pipelines and wells. Better detection and faster repairs could meaningfully slow near-term warming.

Coral bleaching events are becoming more frequent as ocean temperatures rise, and restoration efforts are still small and slow. Without faster recovery methods, many reef ecosystems may not survive this century.

Hotter, drier conditions combined with decades of fire suppression have left forests primed to burn catastrophically. Managing this risk needs new approaches to land management, not just faster firefighting.

Modern farming often strips soil of nutrients faster than nature can replace them, threatening long-term food production. A farming method that restores rather than depletes soil could secure food supply for generations.

Millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, and cleanup efforts remove only a small fraction of it. Without cutting the source and scaling removal, marine ecosystems will keep absorbing the damage.

Machine translation is fast and often accurate, but it still misses jokes, idioms, and cultural context that change meaning entirely. Real cross-cultural communication needs more than word-for-word accuracy.

For decades, computer chips got faster mainly by shrinking transistors, but they're now near the smallest physically possible size. Finding a new way to keep computing power growing is an open engineering problem.

Even our fastest probes would take tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest star system. Without a breakthrough in propulsion, interstellar travel remains purely theoretical.

Fast-growing cities in Colombia regularly flood due to undersized or absent stormwater infrastructure, with retrofit costs far exceeding current municipal budgets.

Create practical risk models and investment plans for fast-growing cities that lack detailed maps, weather records, asset inventories, or technical staff.

Create low-cost alternatives to high-emission cement, steel, and fired bricks while meeting structural safety, financing, and local labor constraints.

Create transition plans for towns dependent on coal jobs, tax revenue, rail infrastructure, and related industries as plants and mines close.

Create practical electrification, heat-pump, biomass, solar-thermal, and process-efficiency solutions for firms unable to finance large decarbonization projects.

Elections in Bangladesh have been targeted by coordinated disinformation campaigns that spread faster than fact-checking organizations and platforms can respond.

Municipal waste collection in rapidly growing cities of Poland fails to reach large portions of the population, resulting in informal dumping and public health risks.