Backyard Buoys: Meeting Needs of Coastal, Indigenous Communities Through Co-Design and Co-Production

The Backyard Buoys project (https://backyardbuoys.org/) enables Indigenous and coastal communities to gather and use wave data to enhance their blue economies and hazard protections. These communities have been historically underserved, and climate change is making weather and wave predictability even harder. Leveraging low-cost, scalable marine technology in partnership with regional ocean observing networks, Backyard Buoys offers a system for community-managed ocean buoys and data access to complement Indigenous Knowledge. These innovations include a sustainable process for community-led implementation and stewardship of affordable ocean buoys along with co-designed and co-produced mobile and web-based applications (apps) that render data easy to access and understand.