Announcement of the Winner: NYC-CPH Dual Urban Water Vision Challenge

Field Factors, the winner of the NYC-CPH Dual Urban Water Vision Challenge

Field Factors has been announced the winner of the NYC-CPH Dual Urban Water Vision challenge. The winning solution, is a nature-based solution for decentralised rainwater treatment, storage and reuse in urban areas that can locally manage rainwater runoff or high groundwater levels. Their system catches 95% of all rain water with a small urban system, and can through storage of the rainwater, ensure green parks, great sporting pitches every season, and good quality water for industrial use. Their innovative solution is implementable in both New York and Copenhagen and will be a valuable asset in managing stormwater.

“We are excited to have won the NYC-CPH Urban Water Challenge! We started 5 years ago with the goal of making rainwater storage and reuse, driven by nature, business as usual in urban water management in Europe. Showcasing our solution in two frontrunner cities will bring us closer to realise our vision: implementing rainwater solutions that help coastal cities become greener, cooler and water resilient. In and beyond Europe!”.

– Karina Peña, Co-founder & CEO Field Factors

Read about the Urban Water Buffers by Field Factors HERE.

The challenge

Denmark and New York joined forces in this open innovation call. The innovation call has since February attracted more than 16 companies, who with their innovative solutions and approaches to storm water management, tried to solve the overall challenge question: 

How can innovative stormwater treatment and reuse practices help urban areas address the challenges of flooding and recreational water quality exacerbation caused by shifts in rain patterns due to climate change? 

“The Access Cities Dual City Water Challenge has been a very positive example of how cities can help to move innovation forward when it comes to working with climate change adaptation and management. The two cities have identified similar challenges and we have through this process of presenting the challenges for a number of companies gotten a number of really interesting and useful suggestions on how we can work with storm water capture and cleaning in our work. It has in that way been a really fruitful collaboration and the results will not only be of use for us, but can be shared with a wider range of cities”.

– Lykke Leonardsen, Head of Program for Resilient and Sustainable City Solutions at City of Copenhagen, and Alan Cohn, Managing Director, Integrated Water Management

We are really proud and pleased that the City of New York and Copenhagen agreed to work with us and Access Cities on creating this challenge. After 5 months of co-creation processes among the many participating companies, we are happy to be able to announce the winning team. We are excited to follow this process as the winners continue the development of their solutions with both cities. I also want to congratulate everyone who made it to the pitch final and thank every company that decided to take part in the challenge”.

– Tone Søndergaard, Director of Danish Cleantech Hub New York

Challenges such as the NYC-CPH Dual Urban Water Vision Challenge, is key to provide cities with the most innovative, smart city solutions for addressing future, as well as current, climate changes. By partnering up, cities and organizations, open innovation calls ensures that cities develop and transforms in the most efficient and innovative way that can support urban welfare for citizens.

Matchmaking, co-development and the final pitch event

New York City and Copenhagen both sought ideas and solutions for how storm water can be successfully captured and treated to optimize benefits, reduce risks to public health, and promote co-benefits. During the challenge, a kick off-webinar alongside two creative workshops took place.

The kick-off event had more than 35+ number of companies participating from all over the world, and the aim was to provide companies with details on the challenges New York and Copenhagen have. In case you missed the kick-off webinar and is interested in reading about it you can access the webinar here.

In the following weeks after the kick-off webinar, the organizers of the NYC-CPH Dual Urban Water Vision challenge invited the interested companies to two co-creation workshops, where they had the opportunity to further develop their ideas and to drive upcoming matchmaking between the participating companies. Here, 16 companies from 7 countries applied to take part in the challenge.

In the final, New York and Copenhagen came together in a final pitch event where the participating companies had the opportunity to pitch their ideas and solutions in front of a panel consisting of judges from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, City of Copenhagen, Rambøll and C40 Cities. Five pitches were presented in total and brought many interesting ideas to the table on how Copenhagen and New York can capture and treat storm water for their current and upcoming challenges. This involved ideas such as creation of green-blue buildings where the buildings can collect water and direct them into tanks beneath the buildings, or using plants to collect water to prevent flooding in cities, or last using ‘waterbeds’ at soccer fields to collect rainwater. The event brought many interesting ideas and you can now watch all five pitches.

---

Watch the five pitches

Pitch 1: Urban water buffers by Field Factors

Pitch 2: The climate tool box by ACO, InfoTiles, Waterway Ecologics, Aquality, Sensoterra and Tredje Natur

Pitch 3: Stormwater capture and treatment in dense urban areas & the polder roof-smart blue-green roofs for stormwater and capture by PaverGuide and MetroPoulder Company

Pitch 4: EcoGarden and EcoSmart by Eco Island

Pitch 5: Climate infrastructure by Chambers Design, Waterway Ecologies and Flood-Con LLC

---

Interested in the urban water market opportunities in the US? Download our Urban Water roadmap HERE.

---

Organizing partners