Problem Briefs

78 unsolved problems across 13 domains. Filter by genome tags to find structural patterns.

78 / 78 problems

wildfire-wui-fire-codes-unproven

Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Codes Are Largely Unproven — Building Codes Address the Wrong Fire Exposure

regulatory / technical

water-premise-plumbing-1940s-design-codes

U.S. Plumbing Codes Size Pipes Using 1940s Data, Causing the Water Safety Problems They're Supposed to Prevent

regulatory / data

transport-v2x-spectrum-regulatory-destruction

The FCC Reallocated Safety-of-Life Vehicle Communication Spectrum to Wi-Fi After 21 Years of Deployment Failure

regulatory / coordination

transport-uas-bvlos-airworthiness-standards-gap

The FAA Built a Drone Regulation That References Standards That Don't Fully Exist Yet

regulatory / technical

space-radiation-hardened-computing-gap

Space Computers Are 20 Years Behind Commercial Processors Because Only Two Companies Can Make Them

technical / supply-chain / manufacturing

space-lunar-night-survival-thermal

No Spacecraft Can Affordably Survive 14 Days of Lunar Darkness at -233°C

technical / economic / supply-chain

space-isru-regolith-oxygen-extraction

We Know Lunar Soil Is 45% Oxygen but Cannot Yet Extract It on the Moon

technical / manufacturing / infrastructure

space-european-component-non-dependence

Europe Cannot Build Satellites Without American Chips and Has No Fallback

supply-chain / regulatory / manufacturing

space-eclss-oxygen-recovery-gap

The Space Station Loses Half Its Oxygen to Space Because No One Can Close the Carbon Loop

technical / manufacturing

space-debris-non-cooperative-capture

No One Has Ever Captured a Tumbling Object in Orbit and the Debris Problem Is Already Past the Point of No Return

technical / coordination / economic

manufacturing-am-metal-part-qualification-barrier

Additively Manufactured Metal Parts Have No Blanket Certification Pathway — Every Part Requires Bespoke Qualification

regulatory / technical / data

humanitarian-refugee-mental-health-cultural-mismatch

Western Mental Health Models Fail Displaced Populations Because They Were Designed for Clinic-Based Therapy, Not Community-Based Healing

behavioral / equity / coordination

humanitarian-refugee-disability-digital-access

Refugees With Disabilities Cannot Access the Digital Services That Humanitarian Organizations Built to Reach Them

equity / behavioral / infrastructure

humanitarian-refugee-cooking-energy-transition

Refugees Spend $2 Billion a Year on Firewood While 25 Million Trees Are Cut Down Around Their Settlements — and Clean Alternatives Keep Failing at Adoption

behavioral / economic / infrastructure

health-snakebite-antivenom-community-access

Snakebite Kills 138,000 People a Year Because Antivenom Treatment Was Designed for Hospitals That Victims Can't Reach

behavioral / equity / infrastructure

health-oxygen-concentrator-low-resource-failure

Oxygen Concentrators Designed for Air-Conditioned Homes Fail Within Months in the Tropical Clinics Where Children Are Dying

technical / infrastructure / economic

health-malaria-rdt-behavioral-compliance

Health Workers Override Malaria Test Results, Undermining the Diagnostic Tool That Was Supposed to Replace Clinical Guesswork

behavioral / equity

health-cervical-cancer-screening-access-equity

90% of Women in Low-Income Countries Have Never Been Screened for Cervical Cancer Because Screening Was Designed Around the Clinician, Not the Woman

behavioral / equity / infrastructure

energy-wind-blade-composite-recycling-no-standard

8,000 Wind Turbine Blades Decommissioned Annually in the U.S. Have No Recycling Standard

regulatory / technical / economic

energy-hydrogen-pipeline-testing-standards-gap

Hydrogen Blending into Gas Pipelines Is Outpacing the Testing Standards Meant to Ensure Safety

regulatory / technical / data

energy-grid-forming-inverter-standards-barrier

Grid-Forming Inverters Can't Interconnect at Scale Because Standards Were Written for the Technology They're Replacing

regulatory / technical

education-stem-faculty-ebip-adoption-gap

STEM Faculty Know Active Learning Works but Don't Adopt It — and Training Won't Fix It

behavioral / coordination

education-rural-stem-infrastructure-mismatch

STEM Ed-Tech Designed for Connected Classrooms Fails in Rural America

infrastructure / equity

education-racial-equity-deficit-framing

STEM Diversity Interventions Target Student Deficits Instead of Institutional Structures

behavioral / equity

education-growth-mindset-structural-blind-spot

Growth Mindset Interventions Cannot Solve Structural Barriers to College Persistence

behavioral / economic

education-curriculum-assessment-misalignment

Countries Reform Curricula Toward Competencies but Assessment Systems Still Test Knowledge Recall

coordination / regulatory

construction-3d-printed-concrete-code-void

3D Printed Concrete Buildings Have Zero Provisions in U.S. Building Codes

regulatory / technical

circular-recycled-plastics-pcr-spec-void

No One Can Specify What "Recycled Plastic" Means — And That's Why the Circular Economy Can't Scale

regulatory / economic / data

water-aging-pipe-network-failure-prediction

Cities Cannot Predict Which of Their Millions of Buried Water Pipes Will Fail Next

data / economic / infrastructure

MANUFACTURING-smm-data-interoperability

Manufacturing Data Trapped in Proprietary Silos Blocks Smart Manufacturing Adoption by Small and Medium Manufacturers

economic / data / coordination

infrastructure-water-ot-security-gap

Water Utilities Run Decades-Old Control Systems That Cannot Be Secured Against Modern Cyber Threats

technical / economic / infrastructure

infrastructure-scada-legacy-ai-detection

AI-Based Intrusion Detection Cannot Deploy on Legacy SCADA/PLC Systems

technical / infrastructure

HEALTH-tbi-biomarker-clinical-adoption

FDA-Approved TBI Blood Biomarker Devices Exist but Face Systemic Barriers to Clinical Adoption

regulatory / economic / data

health-assistive-tech-aging-adoption-gap

Digital Health Technologies Fail at Adoption for Older Adults Despite Technical Effectiveness

behavioral / equity / economic

food-safety-food-water-data-fragmentation

Food and Water Data Are Siloed Across Incompatible Systems, Preventing Integrated Resource Management

data / coordination / infrastructure

food-safety-blockchain-physical-digital-gap

Blockchain Traceability Systems Cannot Verify Physical-Digital Compliance in Food Supply Chains

technical / data

energy-grid-transformer-supply-chain-crisis

The World Needs to Double Its Electricity Grid but Can't Get the Transformers and Cables Fast Enough

manufacturing / economic / coordination

energy-grid-connection-queue-bottleneck

Renewable Energy Projects Wait Years in Grid Connection Queues With No Systematic Way to Prioritize Them

regulatory / coordination / data

DIGITAL-twin-vvuq-gap

Digital Twins Lack Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification Methods for Bidirectional Feedback Loops

technical / data

DIGITAL-scientific-ai-data-scarcity

AI for Scientific Discovery Fails on Small, Fragmented, Multi-Modal Datasets Typical of Most Sciences

data / technical

digital-scada-adversarial-ai-robustness

Explainable AI in SCADA Security Creates Exploitable Attack Surfaces

technical / data

digital-food-chain-interoperability-failure

Cross-Platform Interoperability Failure Fragments Food Supply Chain Traceability

coordination / technical / data

DIGITAL-autonomous-system-runtime-resilience

No Formal Framework Exists to Measure or Verify Resilience of Autonomous Systems at Runtime

technical / regulatory

DIGITAL-ai-trustworthiness-heterogeneous-verification

Heterogeneous AI Systems Cannot Be Verified End-to-End for Trustworthiness Because Trust Frameworks Are Fragmented Across Communities

technical / regulatory

agriculture-smallholder-cold-chain-access

Smallholder Farmers in Developing Countries Lose 15% of Income to Preventable Food Spoilage

infrastructure / economic / equity

manufacturing-sme-circular-economy-barriers

Small Manufacturers Can't Afford the Circular Economy Transition They're Being Mandated to Make

economic / regulatory / coordination

manufacturing-reuse-quality-standardization

No One Can Certify Whether a Reused Part Is Good Enough to Use Again

technical / manufacturing / economic

infrastructure-electric-bus-transit-battery-degradation

Accelerated Battery Degradation in Electric Transit Buses Under Real-World Duty Cycles

technical / economic

health-prior-authorization-automation

Automated Extraction and Matching for Healthcare Prior Authorization

data / technical / coordination

health-digital-therapeutics-outcome-measurement

Real-World Outcome Measurement for Prescription Digital Therapeutics

data / regulatory / economic

environment-ocean-carbon-removal-verification

Monitoring and Verification of Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal

technical / data

energy-waste-gasification-corrosion

Corrosion-Resistant Gasification of Municipal Solid Waste for Fuel Production

technical / manufacturing

energy-lfp-battery-recycling-economics

The Batteries Winning the Grid Storage Race Are the Hardest to Recycle Economically

economic / manufacturing

energy-grid-inertia-loss-frequency-instability

Renewable Grids Are Losing the Spinning Mass That Keeps Power Frequency Stable

technical / infrastructure / coordination

energy-grid-battery-scale-failure-prediction

Grid-Scale Battery Failures Behave Nothing Like Lab Tests Predict

technical / data

energy-building-retrofit-digital-gap

Most Buildings That Need Retrofits Have No Digital Models to Optimize Them

technical / economic / data

energy-building-performance-prediction-gap

Building Energy Models Overestimate Retrofit Savings, Distorting Investment Decisions

technical / data

agriculture-indoor-farming-energy-efficiency

Energy Cost Barrier in Indoor Vertical Farming

economic / technical / infrastructure

water-graphene-membrane-desalination

Nanoporous Graphene Membranes Cannot Scale from Lab to Industrial Desalination

manufacturing / technical

water-field-pathogen-detection

Field-Deployable Detection of Waterborne Pathogens Remains Too Slow and Complex for Low-Resource Settings

technical / economic / infrastructure

water-electrochemical-arsenic-removal

Electrochemical Arsenic Removal Works in the Lab but Cannot Scale to Serve 140 Million Affected People

economic / infrastructure / behavioral

MANUFACTURING-semiconductor-panel-scale-integration

The I/O Performance Wall — Semiconductor Packaging Cannot Scale to Meet AI Compute Demand

technical / manufacturing / supply-chain

OCEAN-underwater-iot-energy

Underwater Sensor Networks Die Faster Than They Can Be Serviced

technical / infrastructure / economic

OCEAN-submerged-litter-ai-detection

AI Systems Can't Detect Marine Litter Once It Sinks or Deforms

data / technical

OCEAN-oil-spill-thickness-estimation

Remote Sensing Can Detect Oil Spills but Can't Measure How Thick They Are

technical / data

OCEAN-fiber-sensor-field-deployment

Optical Fiber Ocean Sensors Can't Survive the Transition from Lab to Sea

technical / manufacturing

OCEAN-dl-extreme-event-failure

Ocean Prediction Models Fail Exactly When They're Needed Most — During Extreme Events

technical / data

BIO-neuro-environmental-adaptation

How Nervous Systems Respond to Anthropogenic Environmental Change Is Unknown

technical / data / coordination

INFRASTRUCTURE-cascading-failure-modeling

Cascading Failures Across Interdependent Infrastructure Systems Cannot Be Predicted

technical / data / coordination

health-mems-ocular-drug-delivery

Implantable Microchip Drug Delivery for Chronic Eye Disease Remains Preclinical After 25 Years

technical / manufacturing / regulatory

health-longterm-implantable-glucose-sensor

Long-Term Implantable Glucose Sensors Still Defeated by the Foreign Body Response

food-safety-vaccine-freeze-detection

Detecting Unintentional Freezing in Vaccine Shipments

economic / behavioral

MANUFACTURING-critical-minerals-waste-extraction

The U.S. Cannot Extract Critical Minerals from Its Own Waste Streams

technical / economic / manufacturing

ENVIRONMENT-chemical-sensor-field-deployment

Chemical Sensors Systematically Fail Outside the Laboratory

technical / manufacturing / data

BIO-evolution-innovations-lost

Evolution's Solutions Are Being Lost Before We Can Decode Them

coordination / data / technical

DIGITAL-autonomous-systems-formal-verification

AI-Enabled Autonomous Systems Cannot Be Formally Verified for Safety

technical / regulatory

agriculture-soil-moisture-precision-irrigation

Affordable Distributed Soil Moisture Sensing Still Cannot Match the Spatial Variability of Real Fields

economic / technical

agriculture-realtime-soil-organic-matter-sensing

Real-Time On-the-Go Soil Organic Matter Sensing Still Cannot Deliver Reliable Variable-Rate Application

technical / data