University of North Carolina Wilmington officials announced the launch of the UNCW Blue Economy Financial Index early this month.

The launch is the first step in establishing the index as a resource for investors to use when tracking the performance of the Blue Economy. Students at the university’s business school built the index over the past several months through a partnership with the Alliance for the Blue Economy and the database FactSet.

The index includes a couple hundred companies. The Blue Economy encompasses companies that sustainably utilize the ocean as a resource for economic growth.

The index is comprised of publicly traded companies within the Blue Economy. While no local companies will be included in the index, Richard Keary, a longtime financial consultant and member of All Blue, hopes Wilmington will be associated with the blue economy and put on the map as a blue economy hub.

The announcement by the university on Feb 5 was a way of telling the community that the index is complete, said Miran Hossain, an assistant professor of economics and finance at UNCW. Hossain leads the students who have researched and curated and will maintain and update the index.

Hossain said the index’s rollout has yet to come. After signing a contract with INDXX, an agent that will help get the index published on websites like Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg Terminal, the index is planned to be published on multiple websites in the next week, he said.

INDXX, an index provider with offices in the U.S. and India, is also aiding in index values calculation, Hossain said.

The university made a LinkedIn page for the index, where updates are planned to be posted every couple of days. Hossain will oversee the LinkedIn page, and his students will maintain the front end of the index, which has yet to be released, he said.

After the index is posted and viewable to the public, the university plans to license it so it can appear on global stock exchanges, Hossain said.