The RELX Group Environmental Challenge is awarded to projects that best demonstrate how they can provide sustainable access to safe water where it is presently at risk and/or access to improved sanitation. Projects must have clear practical applicability, address identified need, and advance related issues such as health, education, or human rights. The RELX Group Environmental Challenge is open to individuals or organisations operating in the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. Projects must advance sustainable access to safe water where it is presently at risk and/or access to improved sanitation, and include the following criteria:
- Be replicable, scalable and sustainable. and set a benchmark for innovation
- Have practical applicability
- Address non-discrimination/equity of access
- Involve and impact a range of stakeholders
- Have local/community-level engagement
These are the criteria against which projects will be assessed. Early stage projects are preferred. The winning project in the RELX Group Environmental Challenge will receive a single payment of $50,000, with the second place finisher receiving a single payment of $25,000.
All applicants will be offered access to relevant RELX Group products, such as Water Research, that can help in the preparation of their submissions. All applicants will be offered access to LexisNexis Risk Solution’s open source high performance computing (HPCC) resource, to allow them to process large amounts of research data. Documentation, tools, code examples and online training courses in HPCC and ECL, the programming language used by the HPCC Systems platform, will also be available to those applicants that may need them. Winning projects will be highlighted in Water Research.
Judging
Applications will be reviewed against the RELX Group Environmental Challenge criteria by the RELX Group Environmental Challenge advisory group, comprised of relevant internal and external water and sanitation specialists. Those in contention for the short list will be reviewed by an expert panel of external judges. Shortlisted candidates will be given the opportunity to refine and elaborate on their proposals. Following interviews of shortlisted candidates, winners will be announced.
Read an article about the 2016 winners
