Hunt for Missing Flight MH370 Turns to Crowd-sourcing for Help
Three days
ago Malaysian Flight MH370, flying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur
to Beijing, vanished from all radars and form of communication. In an
attempt to increase the hunt, Digital Globe – a satellite imagery company based
in the US, has released satellite images from the weekend the plane vanished
and is asking the general public to scour the large area for any clues of a
wreckage.
“For people
who aren’t able to drive a boat through the Pacific Ocean to get to the
Malaysian peninsula, or who can’t fly aeroplanes to look there, this is a way
that they can contribute and try to help out,” said Digital Globe’s Luke
Barrington.
The company
is seeking volunteers through Tomnod, a crowd-sourcing platform that had 25 000
users prior to the appeal for people to join the hunt of the missing Boeing
777. 3200 square kilometers of imagery have been released thus far, with more
to come soon.
The hunt has
already comprised of at least 34 planes and 40 ships from 10 different nations
and now through crowd-sourcing, Digital Globe is offering anybody with an
internet connection the chance to offer their eyes and assistance.
Users
scouring the images drop tags where they feel something of significance is
visible by looking for possible clues released in a guideline image of what to
look out for. An algorithm then looks for areas where multiple users have
tagged and the most frequently tagged areas are directed to experts for further
examination.
“We’ll
say ‘here are our top ten suspicious or interesting locations’,” Mr
Barrington said. “Is it really an aircraft wing that’s been chopped in half
or is this some other debris floating on the ocean? We may not be 100 per cent
sure, but if this is where I had to go pick a location to go looking for
needles in this big haystack, this is where I’d start.”
Tomnod is
also known for its efforts in the hunt for the vintage yacht, the Nina, after
it vanished on a voyage from New Zealand to Australia with 7 crew members
aboard. It also helped map the damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan that struck the
Philippines last November.
If you would
like to offer your help, head over to Globe Master’s Tomnod page here.
- See more at: http://interestingengineering.com/hunt-for-missing-flight-turns-to-crowd-sourcing-for-help/#sthash.Z07jgWla.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment