Microsoft Technology for Resilience Request For Ideas (RFI)
Region: Global
Creating technologies, systems, and partnerships to enable societies to be more resilient
About the program
Application closed on June 7, 2022, at 11:59 PM (PDT)
Microsoft is opening a global Request for Ideas (RFI) to better understand our role in helping to build more resilient societies. The world has already started to see the impact of a changing world on vulnerable communities, along with the need to continuously develop scalable solutions to increase community resiliency. We believe that new technologies can play a crucial role in building humankind’s capacity for resilience when applied thoughtfully and with the contextual knowledge needed for having positive impact on individuals and communities.
When technology is at its best, it can provide tremendous benefits to society. But introducing new technology can inadvertently widen access gaps or cause unintended harm, such as further marginalizing vulnerable populations. As society desires more inclusive and socially aware technology practices, Microsoft is looking toward a future where society and technology interact with greater inclusivity and positive impact.
Through recent investments such as Project Resolve and Project Eclipse, Microsoft has partnered with communities, experienced the power of community-driven innovation, and gained insights into our capabilities. Working with organizations such as SEEDS in India, we’ve been able to demonstrate how technology can identify resilience risk at the household level. Additional research from Microsoft in this space can be found on our Societal Resilience page.
We’ve also come to acknowledge how much more area there is to cover. We are issuing this RFI to engage with the research community and the public to better understand how Microsoft can contribute toward a more resilient future. We intend to use this information to broaden our understanding of the landscape and inform planning for future research and events such as workshops, summits, and calls for proposals.
Who can respond
Respondents must be over the age of 18 and must provide contact information. We encourage respondents from technology, government agencies, academia, nonprofits, and those with first-hand experience in areas of societal resilience.
Topics of interest
We are looking for ideas that best leverage Microsoft’s own AI, ML, Data Analysis and Visualization capacities, Social Scientists, and other expertise along with our Azure platform for robust and complex computing. We seek ideas that accelerate progress in building resilient societies. We are interested in ideas on both local and global scales. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Accessibility
- Inclusive employment
- Data science for societal challenge
- Disaster preparedness and response
- Household food insecurity and vulnerability analysis
- Identity and credentials
- Provenance and misinformation
- Causal inference and discovery toolkits
- AI and NLP technologies for low resource languages
- Community based platforms
- Data privacy tools
- Urban sensing
- Resilient cyber infrastructure
- Emerging market financial systems
Instructions to respond to this RFI
Interested stakeholders are invited to use this to provide their information. The submission form requires the following information. Responses are limited to two pages
- Name and affiliation
- Webpage and/or contact email address
- Domain(s) of expertise, discipline(s)/sub-discipline(s)
- How are Microsoft’s capabilities relevant to your idea?
- What resources or technology components does Microsoft have or could build that could be leveraged to address your idea? (up to 100 words)
- What, if any, data would be required for your idea to be successful? (up to 100 words)
- Information and ideas in topic area, including:
- Title (up to 50 words)
- Abstract (up to 1,000 words), including:
- What is the potential impact?
- What opportunities are there for deployment and scale?
- What does the landscape and partner ecosystem look like?
- What are the cost considerations, and possible funding sources?
- What are possible quantitative and qualitative success indicators i.e., how would you demonstrate the idea is successful?
- Document (up to 5 pages) optional
- Links to further information
- Additional Societal Resilience Idea (optional; limit to 3 total)
Application closed on June 7, 2022, at 11:59 PM (PDT)
Microsoft will use the information submitted in response to this RFI at its discretion and has no obligation to provide responses or comments to any responder’s submission. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response.