Urban Resilience
Urban resilience is about protecting human health during heatwaves, keeping homes dry during floods, lowering insurance bills, and creating new, good-paying jobs that future-proof our workforce.
Alongside our incredible partners, we’re building tools, training leaders, and testing solutions that make communities stronger, safer, and more prepared for the effects of climate change.
Climate Tech Incubation
We help critical innovations advance toward market at the pace necessary to address the climate crisis. By partnering with early-stage innovators, growth-stage companies, and everyone in between, we are lowering barriers to market. Our approach, including fellowships, innovation challenges, piloting infrastructure, and connections to capital matches urban resilience needs with scalable climate tech solutions, creating pathways for technologies that can transform how cities mitigate and adapt to climate impacts.
Climate Solutions Summit NYC
The Exchange hosted its inaugural Climate Solutions Summit NYC—in partnership with the NYC Panel on Climate Change and UCCRN.
The Earth Week event (April 23–24, 2025), which took place on Governors Island, brought together scientists, community leaders, policymakers, and innovators to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time: building climate resilience in coastal urban environments.
Oceans & Coastal Resilience
The beauty of our oceans draws communities to coastlines, while their increasing force threatens millions of people who live, work, and recreate near them. Cities, like NYC, face mounting risks from tidal flooding to sea level rise, which require them to adapt their built and natural environments to protect residents. Building resilience in these environments requires collaboration between scientists, community leaders, policymakers, and innovators. Here’s how we’re convening diverse communities to develop climate solutions that address ocean health and protect coastal cities.
Communicating Science
The Exchange will launch its Climate Story Project at Climate Week NYC 2025. With support from the Wellcome Trust, we’re collecting and sharing diverse personal stories about how climate change affects human health. Through a growing digital archive, live events, and in-person workshops, the project harnesses the power of storytelling to make climate science accessible and actionable. The initiative brings together partner organizations, including WE ACT, NYU, and Billion Oyster Project to ensure authentic community voices are heard and amplified.
AI Innovation for Resilience
Organized by The Exchange, Pace University, and IBM, this competition invited student teams from our partner universities to design stormwater management solutions for NYC using AI. The winning team, “Hydro Heroes” from Georgia Tech, created a flood monitoring system using traffic camera video feeds and social media posts to integrate information on flooding severity and public sentiments into a centralized dashboard to increase public safety and reduce flood damage. SoMAS, from Stony Brook University, presented "eFlood," a mobile app that integrates flood sensor data and resident feedback to offer safe travel routes for people moving through the city during storms.
Design Exchange: Innovations for a Changing Climate
This new event series brings together architects, urban planners, and climate experts to explore innovative design solutions for New York's most pressing climate challenges—from mass timber construction to extreme heat mitigation strategies.
These collaborative discussions, led by the Municipal Art Society of New York and Pratt Institute, foster cross-sector partnerships that translate cutting-edge research and climate tech into practical interventions that protect communities and strengthen the city's ability to prepare for and adapt to climate impacts.