Save The Waves Mobile App
Lead Organizations
Project Description
The overall goal of the project is to empower the global surfing community to crowdsource key data on the most pressing issues facing our coastal communities, including harmful coastal development, plastic pollution, sea-level rise and impaired water quality The Save The Waves mobile App uses a smart phone's camera technology to document inappropriate development, water quality impairments, plastic pollution, sea-level rise and other coastal issues and report them in order to find solutions. Users snap a photo of the impacted site, select a threat category menu and include a brief comment. The photo is geotagged by the phone's GPS and then synched with a mapping function to display on the app. Users are incentivized through a combination of social media cross-posting, gameification and sponsor incentives. Data is then shared with on the ground practitioners, coastal agencies and governments, which can be a game-changer for protected area managers.