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The Caribbean is not a collection of small islands. It is a network of Big Ocean States — with vast maritime territories, active shipping lanes, exposed coastlines, and deep dependence on ocean-linked systems.
This is a large, under-optimized economic system.
The opportunity is to use public data + hydrospatial models (weather, ocean, satellite) to build systems that can be deployed now — improving coordination, reducing risk, and unlocking economic value.
This track focuses on practical, real-time systems for ocean intelligence, resilience, and coordination.
If these systems work in Big Ocean States like the Caribbean, they scale globally.
Systems that:
Vessel tracking and route optimization. Detection of anomalous or "dark" vessel behavior. Risk scoring for shipping routes based on weather and congestion.
Fishing zone prediction using ocean temperature and currents. Trip and fuel optimization. Lightweight coordination tools for fleets.
Storm surge and flood risk forecasting. Location-based alerts for infrastructure and operators. Threshold-based triggers for action.
Solar and wind forecasting for island grids. Ocean condition modeling for coastal energy systems. Climate-driven demand and grid stress prediction.
Rainfall to runoff to coastal impact tracking. Sediment and pollution flow prediction. Coastal stress indicators.
Unified APIs combining AIS, weather, ocean, and satellite data. Real-time alerting systems (risk, anomalies, thresholds). Decision layers for operators, not analysts.
Real-time visibility of vessel locations and routes. Estimated arrival times across ports. Visibility into available cargo capacity. Coordination layer for moving goods between islands. Turn fragmented shipping into a visible, coordinated network.
Forecasting and drift modeling using satellite and ocean data. Beach-level arrival predictions and early warning systems. Coordination tools for cleanup and response. Logistics optimization for collection and interception. Systems to convert biomass into usable products. Air quality and environmental monitoring.
Coral reefs are among the Caribbean's most economically and ecologically important assets — protecting coastlines, supporting fisheries, driving tourism, and sustaining marine biodiversity. Yet warming oceans, acidification, pollution, and disease are pushing reef systems toward collapse across the region.
New advances in genomics, assisted evolution, and CRISPR-based coral research are opening the door to a new category of restoration systems: identifying, breeding, and potentially engineering more heat-tolerant coral species capable of surviving future ocean conditions. Researchers have already used CRISPR-Cas9 techniques to identify genes linked to coral heat tolerance and stress response.
This challenge asks teams to explore how AI, genomics, hydrospatial modeling, robotics, and environmental monitoring can support next-generation reef restoration systems for small island states.
The Caribbean is one of the most climate-exposed regions in the world. If scalable reef restoration systems can work here — across fragmented island environments with real ecological and economic pressure — they can become models for coastal resilience globally.
Big Ocean States provide:
They are the best environments to build and prove these systems.
If it works here, it works anywhere.
Teams should build systems that can be deployed immediately using public data and hydrospatial models — and adopted by governments, operators, and infrastructure providers.
Big Ocean States are not small markets. They are large ocean economies. This track is about building the systems that allow them to operate, coordinate, and scale.
Build practical, deployable systems using public data and hydrospatial models. Prove them in the Caribbean. Scale them everywhere.