Ask HN: Why can't we crowdsource the search for the missing MH370 flight? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why can't we crowdsource the search for the missing MH370 flight?

5 pointsaravindc2 comments

If the world's govts and private agencies can donate the latest hi-res images of the region where there are now massive search operations of the missing MH370 flight (hope it never crashed and all are well somewhere!), can't we plug the images into a web platform and do a crowdsourced search of the entire area?

Some of my questions related to this are:

1) How long does it take for military satellites to hi-res photograph an area the size in question?

2) How many such satellites are there that can be deployed for such use by world's militaries and companies?

3) If the recent hi-res satellite images can indeed be obtained, is there a software platform that can then take these images and distribute them to individuals and make sure every sq.inch of the area has been visually combed by humans?

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There are a few issues I think.

1. The imagery you see on Google Earth where you see features (such as floating luggage) is actually taken from aeroplanes travelling up and down. It takes a lot of time as you can guess to do that and processing time, and the area to cover is huge.

2. There are satellites that can be used, and tasked for (e.g.. using the Space Charter), if we wanted to identify pieces of floating luggage. However the window that these satellites can view upon the world is quite small, and the search area is very very large. It also depends on where the satellites are pointed at if geostationary, and if they move, what path at which time can be got (I'd imagine several passes across the globe would be needed to cover the area).

There are other satellites that could be used, and have done in cases of disasters - here they can find roads and destroyed houses for example. They might not be able to spot floating luggage, but they should be able to help identify large chunks. Even with this case, I think the huge surface area is going to be prohibitive in this case also.

3. Weather. For both aerial imagery and satellite imagery - the weather, cloud cover is important. I'm not sure of the cloud cover there at the moment, but I've read reports of thunderstorms in the vicinity.

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>is there a software platform that can then take these images and distribute them to individual

Yep

Folks may remember the 2007 search for the missing pilot Steve Fossett http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/11/fossett_search

The number of individual images are going to be much much more - but in our case the number of online volunteers is going to be high also. I think the lessons learnt may be the same though. This used Amazon Turk.

For the recent Hurricane Sandy - the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team used something called MapMill to do the same kind of thing. http://irevolution.net/2012/11/01/crowdsourcing-sandy-buildi... http://opengov.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submis... This used imagery from the civil air patrol.

It's being done - please help out here http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014

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