The World Bank wants its much vaunted Open Data initiative to help mitigate challenges brought about by climate change.

The Bank’s special envoy for climate change Andrew Steer launched  the “Apps for Climate” competition last Friday at COP 17 in Durban. Steer said the competition will encourage software developers to use open data to create innovative applications in response to developmental problems brought forth by climate change.

The “Apps for Climate” contest follows The Bank’s recent “Apps for Development” competition, which yielded innovative apps such as ‘save the rain’. ‘Save the rain’ calculates how much rainwater you can save based on your geographic location and the surface area of your roof.

“Apps for Climate” will span many platforms: mobiles, SMS, desktop, tablets etc. Apps must be submitted by March 16, 2012 to be eligible for cash prizes.

Steer also unveiled The Bank’s latest edition of the Little Data Book at the conference. The World Bank publication is a pocket-sized summary of national, international and regional data on climate change issues. The book is accessible via The Bank’s flagship Climate Change Knowledge Portal. It will be updated in the coming months with data on current and projected climate conditions, exposure to climate impacts, resilience, greenhouse gas emissions, climate finance, and current national and international efforts to take action.

Mozambique’s Deputy Environment Minister Ana Chichava lauded the initiative noting that governments need access to climate data to make better use of water resources and plan for extreme floods, cyclones and droughts.

The Minister said data must be accessible to local people to enable better decision-making in agriculture, fisheries and other sectors.