Navigating Rising Tides with Brian Glazer, Hohonu

Welcome back to Planet & Purpose, a bi-weekly LinkedIn Newsletter featuring professional insights and personal experiences from ocean and climate ecopreneurs, VCs, advocates, and beyond.

If you’re new to my page and this newsletter, welcome! I’m Daniela V. Fernandez , Founder & CEO of Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA).

Today I’m thrilled to be joined by Brian Glazer , Co-Founder & CEO of Hohonu —a startup member of SOA’s Ecopreneur Network working to help communities prepare, respond, and recover from flooding with local, democratized data.

Why the focus on flood monitoring? By 2100, it is estimated that sea levels will rise between 2 to 7.2 feet—with larger effects felt particularly in underserved regions of the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast, Asia, and island nations. For example, sea levels in Tonga are rising at almost twice the global average rate.

Hohonu is helping these communities build resilience by providing actionable data and insights into live water level data from over 400 NOAA and Hohonu-sourced data stations (available via Hohonu's TideCast App—details in the 'BONUS' section at the end of this newsletter!).

In our discussion, Brian explains the inspiration for Hohonu and offers lessons for founders to grow their ventures based on his successful business scaling model. 

Read on below and stay tuned for upcoming editions!

Daniela (DVF): Welcome to Planet & Purpose, Brian! Today, we will be diving into your innovative solution for sea level rise adaptation and flood mitigation amidst our changing climate. Anticipating our conversation, I took a moment to research the latest in recent extreme flooding events being that this is one of the greatest resulting impacts of climate change and sea level rise. 

Just within the U.S. alone, several deadly flash floods have wreaked havoc on communities in recent weeks—including Havasupai Reservation, AZ, the Big Island of Hawai’i, and the Northeastern U.S. Beyond that, we’re seeing severe flooding in Bangladesh, Yemen, the UK, and more.

These recent examples are just the tip of the iceberg—and emphasize why your solution is so critical to help vulnerable coastal communities build resilience today for a liveable future tomorrow.

Brian Glazer (BG): Aloha, Daniela. Thank you for shining a light on this issue and inviting me to talk about Hohonu and our national-scale water monitoring efforts that help predict—and mitigate the impacts of—these types of climate disasters.

DVF: Being that we have been connected since 2021 when Hohonu went through SOA’s Ocean Solutions Accelerator program, I already know this answer—but will you please share with readers what inspired you to tackle this problem?

BG: I was born in Pittsburgh, raised up and down the East Coast, and have lived in Hawai’i for the past twenty years. As an Associate Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for two decades, my students study how chemistry, physics, and biology work together in the ocean.

We’ve always worked closely with engineers in our lab to develop new instruments able to observe what’s happening in the real world. Often, this tech is useful in inaccessible locations, where someone can’t physically be present—we call this ‘unattended observing capabilities’.

In 2014, while working with native Hawaiian communities on traditional coastal fishpond restoration, I began to develop early iterations of the sensors that would eventually go on to underpin Hohonu. 

Inspired by the Hawaiian community in which the idea was incepted, the word ‘hohonu’ can be interpreted from the native Hawaiian language to mean ‘deep’ or ‘profound’—especially in regard to knowledge. Our company’s name was chosen to combine our priorities: rigorous technology and collaboration with communities in pursuit of better understanding their water level needs.

The company launched in 2019 to meet the growing demand for accessible and actionable hyperlocal environmental data, anticipating increasing and intense flooding events in many underserved communities.

DVF: Can you explain what you mean by ‘underserved’ in this context?

BG:  When it comes to sensors and data, the public has historically depended on federal tide stations to understand real-time water levels on the coast. In the U.S. where we have over 95,000 miles of shoreline, there are only about 300 of these federal tide stations. 

Smaller cities that do not have their own tide station are then forced to go based on the data being captured at the nearest tide station—which can be dozens of miles away, inaccurate, and/or unreliable. 

As a result, today’s depth of knowledge for countless emergency weather responders and climate adaptation planners involves relying on media, incoming emergency calls, and examining their environment to estimate high water marks based on flood lines on infrastructure, trees, and more.

DVF: That’s unbelievable. How does Hohonu balance 1. the need for more cost-effective technologies to deploy in as many of these communities as possible with 2. the need to ensure rigorous, high-quality data—which can be costly?

BG: The complexity of federal water level stations makes them cost-prohibitive to put everywhere. At Hohonu, we are proud to fill in the gaps with our simplified and therefore, more affordable, hardware.

Hohonu has developed a full-stack technology product that involves sensors, battery management, telemetry, data management, forecasting, and desktop/mobile software to empower communities to better quantify and understand hyperlocal water levels and guard against flooding events. 

We’ve worked closely with federal scientists, academic researchers, and our internal data scientists to adopt best practices for data quality assurance and control. We’ve also developed new techniques to enable the automation of these processes at unprecedented scales.

This sounds complicated, but the product is actually designed to empower communities and everyday users with easy monitoring and assessment tools—without having to be experts in data science or coastal oceanography.

DVF: Can you share some examples of where Hohonu sensors can be found ‘in the wild’?

BG: We’re proud to share that Hohonu’s sensors have been deployed in over 150 locations and 15 states to date. We’ve captured over 2 million hours of water level data and are aiding in the flood resilience of over 77,700 hectares of land. 

We currently have government partnerships with cities and counties in Maryland, California, Florida, and Washington to name a few (with many others actively in the works).

DVF: That is incredible! Congratulations on that impressive growth. Now, what trends have your data revealed in regard to sea level rise, flooding, and other extreme climate-related impacts in the coastal communities you currently serve?

BG: Over the past 10 years, we’ve observed that a lack of real-time data—paired with increasing flooding events—is becoming a prominent problem for emergency services, infrastructure, transportation, and even insurance.

In Charleston, SC, for example, there were more flooding events in a recent 2-year period than the combined 80 years prior. But for a long time, there weren't any tide stations in the 100 miles between there and Savannah, Georgia. 

As a result, the community sought out a solution to better understand their own backyard. For them, Hohonu was the answer. 

Another example? Through a partnership with the City of Boston, we have been able to better understand how extreme weather is impacting its community after observing flooding nearly every day of a single week.

DVF: This goes back to the heart of Hohonu’s goal to ‘democratize’ flooding data. Please explain what that means for anyone unfamiliar.

BG: Democratizing data means providing actionable insights to protect vulnerable communities by empowering people to use data who never had access to it before. Historically, this was only achievable by either purchasing: 

1. Expensive, more technologically accessible equipment or

2. More affordable equipment, but requires technical expertise to use.

Hohonu aims to solve this with our sensors that are genuinely affordable, offer quality data, and are easy to install/use. The integrated solar panel and cellular card mean all you need is sunlight and a cellular signal to operate it.

As a result of providing an accessible and affordable solution, our customers and their communities genuinely care about the data that’s collected because it can predict how their daily lives will be impacted—from school bus routes to waste services.

DVF: I really appreciate that Hohonu is helping everyday individuals understand what’s happening in their own communities and get involved with planning for future impacts.

Final question: Given your unique public/private partnership model and how rapidly Hohonu has scaled, please share tips on how fellow founders can secure opportunities and funding in the ocean space through cross-sector collaboration and public grants.

BG: My recommendation is to follow the funding and fill the gaps. 

Launching Hohonu from an academic research perspective, we did what was natural for us. We targeted competitive federal programs with existing budgets where we knew our product could make their operations more efficient for less. 

Working with governments can be a long process and appear intimidating. By partnering with local & regional community organizations, we were able to demonstrate value and help show demand quickly. 

So, in our experience at Hohonu, being creative and versatile across government, philanthropic, and private sector funding sources has been pretty catalytic as an emerging startup.

DVF: Brian, thank you for making the leap from academia to the business world to benefit impact communities. I hope to see your technology scaled even further nationwide and around the globe in underserved communities.

BG: Thank you, Daniela. As a member of the Ecopreneur Network, I truly appreciate the ongoing support of Sustainable Ocean Alliance . 

On a final note, I encourage readers who live on the coast to reach out to their community leaders about how Hohonu's UN Decade-endorsed project can help them adapt to a changing reality.

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DOWNLOAD HOHONU’S TIDECAST APP

Interested in better understanding your local tidal predictions and weather forecasts?

Hohonu is helping coastal communities build resilience to sea level rise and flooding by providing actionable data and insights into live water level data through TideCast—the first iOS app with live water level data, tidal predictions, and weather forecasts from hundreds of NOAA and Hohonu data station locations. 

Download TideCast by Hohonu for iOS here.

OPPORTUNITIES IN SOA’S NETWORK

Register for the Annual Hope Summit in Charleston — September 28-Oct 1

Hosted by the Carolina Ocean Alliance, the Hope Summit is an annual conference and festival held in Charleston, South Carolina to highlight local challenges and celebrate community-driven solutions through the dozens of nonprofits, community organizations, schools, and local agencies working to create agency and hope in coastal South Carolina.

From September 28 to October 4, the Summit will gather like-minded individuals for a two-day conference, film festival, community-solutions festival, and ecopreneur market.

Sustainable Ocean Alliance is proud to be a leading sponsor of the Hope Summit. Learn more and register here. Apply for a conference scholarship here.

Have questions? Contact Grey Gowder , Hope Summit Co-Founder and Executive Director of Carolina Ocean Alliance, at grey.gowder@gmail.com. 

ONE MONTH LEFT to Join SOA’s Ecopreneur Network Class of 2024!

Calling all ocean ecopreneurs! There is just ONE MONTH LEFT to apply to SOA’s Ecopreneur Network Class of 2024! If you are the founder of a for-profit, ocean-positive startup, we want to hear from you. 

Learn more and apply here by October 4, 2024 11:59pm PDT.