Backyard Buoys empowers Indigenous and other coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and the Pacific Islands to collect, steward, and use wave data that complements their existing knowledge to support their blue economy: maritime activities, food security, and coastal hazard protection.
The project is one of six Phase II projects aligned to the Track E: Networked Blue Economy and funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator, a program created to find solutions to large-scale societal challenges through research, innovation, and partnerships. In the initial phase (Phase I) of the Backyard Buoys project, partners engaged 15 communities from the three regions to identify community priorities and needs and determine how wave buoy technologies can address those needs and broader goals. Funds from NSF will continue to advance the convergent efforts of the project into the second phase (Phase II).