Last Friday, a team from the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Consensus Building Institute won the Climate CoLab Enabling Adaptation competition. Their proposal: to use consensus building techniques to help at-risk coastal communities formulate and implement plans to manage climate change risks. The team’s proposal, “Building Consensus, Enabling Adaptation, ” won both the Judges’ Choice award and the Popular Vote award in the Enabling Adaptation category. Within each category, the Judges’ Choice was awarded to the proposal deemed strongest by the panel of judges. The popular choice award was given to the proposal in each category with the most social media votes. The team’s proposal is now in the running for the $10,000 Grand Prize. The Grand Prize winner will be announced at the Crowds and Climate Conference scheduled at MIT on November 6-8, 2013.  If the team wins the $10,000 Grand Prize, it will use the money to fund a collaborative adaptation planning process in an at-risk coastal community in New England. Larry Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and team leader thanked the members of the MIT community who lent their on-line support for the project. “More than 150 students, faculty, staff, and alumni responded in 24 hours,” he said. Climate CoLab is hosted by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. For several years, it has worked to “harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people from all around the world to address global climate change.” The Enabling Adaptation contest was one of eighteen simultaneous contests hosted by Climate CoLab, dealing with strategies to decarbonize energy supply, change social attitudes and behaviors, and encourage transportation efficiency. Rob Laubacher, the Associate Director for the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence who manages the Climate CoLab, was impressed by the variety and expertise of the teams who submitted proposals. “Winning authors included staff members of global organizations like the UN Development Programme and eBay; climate scientists and university researchers; professionals in the oil, gas and mining industries; and Executive Directors of NGOs in India, Nicaragua, Canada, and South Africa,” he said. “The project’s growth is very exciting,” said MIT Sloan Professor Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and principal investigator for the Climate CoLab project. “The Climate CoLab community and activity has been doubling or tripling with each annual contest, and there are now over 10,000 registered members. This shows that there are many smart and creative people around the globe engaging with these issues, and we’re very proud of this year’s winners.” The MIT and Consensus Building Institute’s “Building Consensus, Enabling Adaptation” is available online. For more information, please visit the following links: Climate CoLab and this year’s winners The upcoming Crowds & Climate Conference, on Nov. 6-8 MIT Center for Collective Intelligence