Washington, May 23 2014 - The World Bank today announced the Finalists of the Code For Resilience Online Innovation Challenge, a competition to surface locally-driven innovations that address global disaster resilience challenges.

"Natural disasters affected two billion people, most of whom have access to a mobile phone, between 2000–2012," said Francis Ghesquiere, manager of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) at the World Bank. "Mobile phones and other technologies can be leveraged to help citizens and officials alike to improve resilience through data-driven and evidence-based decision making. These Finalists represent the most creative and promising examples of this potential."

The Finalists, from which the Grand Prize Winners will be selected by a World Bank panel, are:

•  [People's Choice Award]: A monitoring and alert system for water levels at sluices.
• : A cooperative communication platform offering real-time help according to user’s language, nationality and location.
• : A tool to support people and rescuers in emergencies.
• : A multi-lingual DIY disaster resilience education picture book for children.
  
• : A mobile simulator that provides realistic evacuation training, enhanced with augmented reality (AR).
• : A cross-platform mobile app to prepare for, help during and recover from a disaster.
• : A method to visualize proper evacuation routes and times.
• : An app for wearable devices to help before, during and after a disaster.
• : A maternal health digitization and communication tool.
• : An app to track, identify and locate people in heavily-visited places.

These Finalists, which include a publicly-voted People's Choice Award, are shortlisted to win the Grand Prize trip to London this summer, where they will pitch their ideas to an audience of practitioners and participate in a study tour with tech firms in the area. The Finalists were selected by a global panel of judges from a broad and competitive field of applications submitted to the Code For Resilience website.

The Online Innovation Challenge connected developers with mentors to help the refine the projects they started at Code For Resilience hackathons, which were held in 10 cities worldwide. These projects were designed in response to 60+ problem statements submitted by practitioners and citizens that articulated local and global disaster resilience challenges.

More information about each app can be found at the apps repository of the Code For Resilience website. The Grand Prize Winners will be announced in late June, on the eve of the 2014 Understanding Risk Forum.