NSF Convergence Accelerator Track E: Backyard Buoys: Equipping Underserved Communities with Ocean Intelligence Platforms

这个名为“后院浮标”的项目使土著和其他沿海社区能够收集和使用海洋数据，以支持他们的蓝色经济：海上活动、粮食安全和沿海灾害保护。该项目的创新之处包括社区主导的可负担得起的海洋浮标可持续管理进程，以及一个基于网络的应用程序，该应用程序使数据易于理解，并成为土著知识的桥梁。在不同和测量不足的地点放置波浪浮标的另一个好处是，从高度局部化的沿海地区产生数据，可用于大规模的科学研究，以改善气候学和预测，这在气候变化方面尤其重要。后院浮标使土著和其他沿海社区能够收集和使用海洋数据，以支持他们的蓝色经济：海上活动、粮食安全和沿海灾害保护。我们汇集了美国综合海洋观测系统（IOOS）的区域海洋观测网络、服务不足的土著社区和一家传感器公司，共同努力使当地波浪测量大众化，并为现有的观测技术障碍提供解决方案，这些技术过于昂贵，无法购买和维持。通过共同设计实施和管理计划，以及在NSF融合加速器第一阶段制定的低保真数据服务应用程序，该项目旨在通过使用成本较低的工具和深化人员与数据的联系来彻底改变现状，这些联系将使一个关注超局部尺度的有效系统成为可能——这是现有海洋观测系统设计中严重缺乏的——同时确保它处于全球连接的网络中。这对于有效的提前规划至关重要，以确保社区安全的蓝色经济。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project, titled Backyard Buoys, empowers Indigenous and other coastal communities to collect and use ocean data to support their blue economy: maritime activities, food security, and coastal hazard protection. Innovations for this project include a sustainable process for community-led stewardship of affordable ocean buoys and a web-based application that renders data easy to understand and bridges to Indigenous knowledge. An additional benefit of getting wave buoys in the water at diverse and under-measured sites is the generation of data from highly-localized coastal areas available for large scale scientific research to improve climatology and predictions, especially important in light of climate change.Backyard Buoys empowers Indigenous and other coastal communities to collect and use ocean data to support their blue economy: maritime activities, food security, and coastal hazard protection. We bring together regional ocean observing networks of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), underserved Indigenous communities, and a sensor company to work collectively to democratize local wave measurements and provide a solution to the existing hurdle of observing technologies that are too expensive to purchase and to sustain. Through co-design of an implementation and stewardship plan, as well as low-fidelity data servicing apps formulated in Phase I of the NSF Convergence Accelerator, this project seeks to to revolutionize status quo by using lower-cost tools and deepening the human and data connections that collectively will allow for an effective system that has a focus on the hyper-local scale – sorely lacking in the design of existing ocean observing systems – while assuring it is within a globally-connected network. This is critical for effective advanced planning to ensure a safe blue economy for the communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.