Financing and Delivering Resilient Infrastructure

Disrupting inertia. Our three key themes are:

Applications close on Tuesday, 28 October 2025

Overall theme

Today, $2.9 trillion a year flows into infrastructure, but much of this investment fails to factor in physical climate risks. The World Bank concludes that infrastructure disruption costs at least $390 billion annually across emerging and developing economies, yet the extra cost of building resilience is only 3% of the overall investment ($87 billion), leading to an overall net benefit of $4.2 trillion.

Problem statement: Planning

The planning process is often seen as archaic and onerous, built on legacy systems, processes, and skills. This leads to project delays, cost overruns, increased risk, and stakeholder dissatisfaction, ultimately fuelling the perception of an inequitable society.

Idea Starter

How can you use Earth Observation, Geospatial Data, Data Fusion, and LLMs to surface insights that enable a faster, more collaborative, and transparent planning process?
How can you use Agentic AI to create autonomous agents that can query disparate data sources via APIs, combine the responses, and take the next action?
For example: create an agent that retrieves data from local planning systems, accesses a central planning system, and then combines the information to create a geospatial map for citizen consultation.

Problem Statement: Nature

Nature as infrastructure is not usually considered in this equation due to the perceived cost, complexity, and challenges of measuring its impact.

Idea Starter

Can you flip this on its head, turning nature into an asset that lowers costs, reduces complexity, and measures real-world impact?
For example, identify ecosystem services such as flood attenuation that protect built assets or provide business/state resilience, and then develop a business model that distributes existing budgets differently to deliver a wider, cross-sectoral benefit.

Problem Statement: Financing

Public and private financing is stretched, and the pensions industry questions their role due to high-risk potential. Who will pay the up-front cost of resilience?

Idea Starter

The financial services industry needs the organisations it finances to have a source of funds that will repay the finance at a rate of return matching the risk of the investment. Often, this is sourced via consumer charges or taxation. What additional sources could be identified?
For example, identify ecosystem services like natural cooling or heating that protect people and property. Can these services generate carbon and biodiversity credits to create receipts, enabling the financing of this transition?

Why Attend?

Resilient Infrastructure is at the heart of the SDGs, the triple challenges of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, and government fiscal policy. The time is now to enhance transparency and collaborate to increase the speed of delivery, all while protecting nature.

The time is now to enhance transparency, collaborate with all to enhance the speed of delivery but avoid throwing the “Nature baby out with the bath water”.

Nexus of forces

This hackathon will tackle the complex interplay of: Resilient Infrastructure for an Equitable Society, Nature as Infrastructure, Impact Finance and Patient Capital, The Planning Process, Normative Accounting, and Data Sharing and Agentic AI.

Levers of change to be utilised

Pension investments, Carbon and Biodiversity credits, Earth observation, Geospatial & Biodiversity Data, Open planning process, Agentic AI.

Resources

Mentors, data, APIs, content, and prizes will be provided to ensure the best teams produce the best outcomes.

Outcome

The best ideas will be promoted to accelerators and incubators, with the intention of creating the pioneers that others will follow.

Who Will Attend?

The Sustainable Finance Live Hackathon is designed for a diverse mix of professionals with a business mindset and technical expertise. You will collaborate with peers and mentors from a wide range of fields, including:

Mentors and business decision makers from Finance, Civil engineering, Utilities, Corporates, Tech and Service Industries

Financial Services: Heads of Sustainable and Impact Investing, Risk Managers, and Entrepreneurs.
Technology: Technologists, Consultants, Heads of Innovation, Product Managers, and Green Impact Advisory.
Civil Engineering & Planning: Designers, Planners, and Builders.
Public Sector: Policymakers, Regulators, and Academics.
Cross-Industry: Professionals from Corporates, Utilities, and NGOs.

Key Dates

23 Oct

Pre-Event Webinar, register here

28 Oct

Applications close

31 Oct

Bootcamp with NayaOne to review the challenges, platform, datasets, APIs, and mentors. This is where you’ll form teams and choose a challenge.

1 Nov

The hackathon commences

1–11 Nov

Virtual Hackathon with dedicated mentoring sessions.
Mentoring: Multidisciplinary teams of subject-matter experts (SMEs) will be available to work with the teams.

4 Nov

Hack in-person at the Sustainable Finance Live 2025 conference. This is a great opportunity to meet mentors and potential customers or partners face-to-face.

11 Nov

Submissions are due

12 Nov

Final Presentations, Judging, and Awards. The morning is for presentations, judging and awards will take place in the afternoon/evening.

Hackathon for Resilient Infrastructure at the Sustainable Finance.Live Conference 2025

The Purpose

The hackathon will bring together a diverse group of people who share a desire to accelerate sustainable finance and enable capital to flow into resilient infrastructure. A key design objective is to create value through the trustworthy implementation of sustainability measures, particularly the data that serves them.

The Audience

This program is designed for market-moving thought leaders, designers, planners, and developers who can wrestle clarity from ambiguity and drive real change. Participants will come from sell-side and buy-side firms, Corporates, Utilities, NGOs, startups, tech giants, and the public sector, all with a business mindset and a technical muscle.

The Outcome

Our purpose is to achieve clarity and create tangible, shareable assets for the industry, such as MVP designs, customer journeys, and platform ideas. Our audacious goal is to take the best ideas forward through incubation and investment, helping to develop an operational model that the rest of the industry can follow.

The Format

This will be an open and inclusive community where we will share knowledge, design together, and collaborate by doing. We will explore, learn from our failures, and succeed together, sharing best practices to advance our collective focus on positive outcomes.

FAQs

What is a Hackathon?

A hackathon is a collaborative event that brings together individuals with a passion for innovation. Be it for nature, finance, resilient infrastructure, equitable society, or technology, participants from all backgrounds—including civil servants, business people, project managers, programmers, developers, designers, and other enthusiasts—work together to create a functional product or solution within a specified timeframe.

The theme or challenge is often centred around innovation, creativity, and problem-solving. By participating, you can learn new skills, connect with other professionals, and showcase your abilities to build new technology and industry solutions.

Why Should You Join the Sustainable.Live Hackathon 2025?

The hackathon provides a unique opportunity to learn something new as you collaborate with other industry experts to find solutions.
Participants gain access to exclusive datasets, fintech APIs, and a Digital Sandbox via NayaOne’s platform to build their solutions.
A hackathon can be a challenging experience that pushes you out of your comfort zone and helps you make new professional discoveries. The pressure of collaborating allows you to examine your abilities from a fresh perspective and is an excellent environment for breakthroughs.
While not all hackathons result in a tangible innovation, you will be part of something special.
These events are also fun and fulfilling, offering a great way for experts and managers to work together towards a common goal in a brand-new environment.

Who Are the Mentors?

Mentors come from various disciplines, including ESG, sustainability innovation, data science, AI, finance, civil engineering, and nature-based solutions. They provide a range of insights that you can use to build your projects. Their skills include data, AI, Agentic AI, APIs, solution design, and more.

Mentors can come from a variety of backgrounds, including industry experts, experienced developers, designers, and business professionals. They provide guidance and support, answering questions, helping troubleshoot problems, and offering advice on best practices. Mentors are an invaluable resource, especially for those new to hackathons or with limited experience in a particular area.

By working with them, you can learn new skills, overcome challenges, and ultimately create better, more innovative projects.

Why Is the Time Commitment for the Hackathon So Long?

Think of the dates as a start and end point, not a period you need to spend on the hackathon itself. This year, we are starting with a webinar and online bootcamp to help you get oriented and discover the process, teammates, and tools to use. You can spend as much time as you like working on your project during this period—be it nights and weekends or full-time; it’s your choice.

Do I Have to Be at a Physical Location to Join?

No, the hackathon is designed to be completed online. However, you will benefit from attending the conference in London to meet people who might help shape your idea, give you a leg up via an accelerator, or even invest.

If an Individual Hacker Does Not Have a Team, How Should They Participate?

Reach out to the Sustainable Finance Live team at events@finextra.com with the details of the theme you would like to work on. Please ensure ‘SF Live Hackathon’ is included in the subject line.