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Buildathon Track

Ocean Systems & Blue Economy

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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.

6M+ km²
Combined Caribbean Ocean Territory
Up to 400x
More Ocean Than Land
$20B+
Recent Caribbean Disaster Losses
13
Independent Caribbean Island Nations

Build Brief

What should be built

Systems that:


High-Priority Areas

Where to focus

1. Maritime & Vessel Intelligence

Vessel tracking and route optimization. Detection of anomalous or "dark" vessel behavior. Risk scoring for shipping routes based on weather and congestion.

2. Fisheries Intelligence (Deployable)

Fishing zone prediction using ocean temperature and currents. Trip and fuel optimization. Lightweight coordination tools for fleets.

3. Coastal Risk & Early Warning

Storm surge and flood risk forecasting. Location-based alerts for infrastructure and operators. Threshold-based triggers for action.

4. Ocean Energy & Weather Intelligence

Solar and wind forecasting for island grids. Ocean condition modeling for coastal energy systems. Climate-driven demand and grid stress prediction.

5. Ridge-to-Reef Systems (Practical)

Rainfall to runoff to coastal impact tracking. Sediment and pollution flow prediction. Coastal stress indicators.

6. Ocean Data Infrastructure

Unified APIs combining AIS, weather, ocean, and satellite data. Real-time alerting systems (risk, anomalies, thresholds). Decision layers for operators, not analysts.

7. Open Maritime Logistics Layer

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.

8. Sargassum Prediction, Response & Utilization

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.


Examples

What could be built


The Bar

What matters


Why Big Ocean States

The best proving ground

Big Ocean States provide:

They are the best environments to build and prove these systems.

If it works here, it works anywhere.


Outcome

This is not research. This is execution.

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.


Big Ocean States. Real Systems. Global Scale.

Build practical, deployable systems using public data and hydrospatial models. Prove them in the Caribbean. Scale them everywhere.

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