Florida has valuable natural resources and built infrastructure along its 8,436 miles of coastline, the second longest coastline among U.S. States and territories [1]. IT has 13 of the 25 american…

Florida has valuable natural resources and built infrastructure along its 8,436 miles of coastline, the second longest coastline among U.S. States and territories [1]. IT has 13 of the 25 american cities most at-risk from the effects of sea level rise and coastal storms [2] with three of them being in the tampa BAY region: tampa, ST. Petersburg and clearwater. Our vision is to create a self-perpetuating climate resilience business accelerator that will develop commercialization pathways and sustainable business models for startups to deliver solutions to address some of the most vexing challenges in hazard mitigation and coastal resilience and ecosystem services centered on societys interactions with the oceans and coasts. Integrating a dynamic tampa BAY coastal location with proven entrepreneurial support services will provide a competitive advantage for at least 50 innovators. In doing so, our bluetech accelerator will create economic opportunities and career pathways for communities that heretofore have not shared in the benefits derived from the blue economy [3, 4] and include a more diverse and inclusive set of entrepreneurs than currently exists in this space. Innovations developed and demonstrated by the accelerator will be both scalable to other regions of the nation and to the world, and are extensible to a broad set of issues outlined in the nofos program priorities.