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Help Find Steve Fossett
An anonymous reader invites us to join in the hunt for the missing Steve Fossett using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. DigitalGlobe, one of Google's imaging partners, has acquired new high-resolution satellite imagery of the area where Fossett disappeared on Monday. The public can now go through this imagery and quickly flag any images that might contain Fossett's plane. Flagged images will receive further review by search and rescue experts.
What's he wearing red and white stripes? Seriously though, this is a pretty cool tool even if it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...
Get a web developer
The area of Nevada where he is missing is actually rugged and mountainous ( I have some proerties in those parts myself ). Look on Google earth if you don't believe me, the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. Also area 51 is now where nearby. There's a lot of rugged and inaccessible terrain he could've gone down, unfortunatley, and 5 days is a long time without water, its dry and hot out this time of year. I'd say the situation doesn't look good at this point, but we can always hope for a miracle, best of luck to the SAR and CAP people.
Yes, Google Earth has updated images of the region. You can tell because they are obviously satellite photos and not overflight. Notice that everything is shot from straight up instead of the normal angle and also note the lack of color.
Read the article, and you'd see that they explain how authorities helped facilitate new images.
I was just looking around the area myself with Google Earth, and saw this, which looks vaguely like a dirt-covered plane: 38.4198N, 119.2905W
Probably nothing, but who knows. Unfortunately, there's no way to flag arbitrary coordinates for review, just the random pictures it spits out.
38 29' 03.51" N
119 24' 21.64" W
I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
It probably can't hurt, but you're right in that it can be difficult for even a trained observer to spot the wreckage of a small plane at that resolution - or even from 5,000 feet with your own eyeballs.
I spent a few years on the local search and rescue team and fortunately only got to see one serious crash up close. From the air, it looked more or less like a bunch of trash strewn across a 100-foot stretch of hillside. Nothing you'd identify immediately as an aircraft, though in this case the huge burn mark helped it stand out.
I was about to post how distorted the image is, when on a hunch I decided to unclick the "terrain" box on GE. The image becomes a LOT clearer, but I still don't think it is nearly clear enough to identify something as small as a 22" plane.
I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image.
3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No.
4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
5 - Goto 2
I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.
Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this:
Show each image to at least 5 people.
Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews.
Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Too bad it's done by Amazon. It's an absolutely fantastic idea, and a really new technology application (getting the public to scan pictures). Unfortunately, I don't have, and won't have an Amazon ID due to their continued promotion of dog fighting
Fuck you, Amazon.
I don't respond to AC's.
The offset isn't constant, sadly. In some places it is the aforementioned 640feet North, in other places 640feet NE, in other places only a 100feet or so.
Meanwhile, here are three candidates.
38 19'12.87"N, 119 16'56.30"W
38 7'51.26"N, 119 27'41.67"W
38 7'34.00"N, 119 29'4.81"W
All are a bit fuzzy, but "plane shaped" and the right size. #2 is by far the sharpest.
I was unable to find either of these in the original google earth maps. (I did find a few others that WERE in the old maps, so they're discarded).
For a distributed human image recognition project I think classify-galaxies-at-home is more rewarding than "find-Fossett's-corpse" (A bit harsh perhaps, but let's not beat around the bush). At least classifying galaxies you get to see some beautiful galaxies that no-one may ever have seen before, and your time will help scientists look for patterns in galaxy types and test theories about galaxy formation.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I suppose this makes some sort of high-tech trifecta: Jim Gray, James Kim (of CNET), and now Steve Fossett.
Speaking with some degree of experience (having done ground SAR in some very remote areas of the United States), I suppose it's predictable: too much money, not enough brains. You won't see these kinds of resources- including retasking Ikonos in the case of Kim- used for finding lost kids and hunters.
Gray: solo boating on a lightweight hull.
Kim: solo self-rescue attempt in unfamiliar terrain instead of staying put.
Fossett: solo flying without filing a flight plan.
I feel sorrow for the families. Not so much for the victims.
I started cruising around in Google Earth and I found something interesting at 3815'31.05"N,11918'59.08"W . It's about the right size and is not on older maps. How do I report it? The Mechanical Turk interface has no method for reporting except to flag one of the random tiles.
People who are searching for Steve Fossett should update to the latest colo(u)r images for google earth from the latest data refresh.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/geoeye-color.kml
(Please mod up. Posted as AC to prevent karma-whoring. Editors please consider for article update.)
When I started to help this morning there were 32,000 work units (called hits, images to be reviewed) available. They were disappearing at a rate of 5-10,000 per hour, meaning that all things being equal there were 50-100 people looking at them.
:) I'm guessing that although from the side it's mostly blue, that the top of the wings are white.
However over the past half hour the work units available have been *increasing*. Currently 12,000 and increasing. Clearly they are adding more to be done faster than we're doing them. So anyone who helped out at the beginning - don't assume the hits are "all done". There could be more at any time.
In my old version of IE I couldn't see the scale bars or the example image, looking at the same coords of a unique scene in google maps I estimated the image was 125m x 125m - which would be half meter resolution. Now I see they claim the images are actually 85x85m, which would be 1.08ft resolution.
Based on that and that I've done 400 units, that mean's I've searched one full square mile.
It also means the 32,000 units I saw when I started is only 10 miles x 10 miles, 100 square miles. I heard someone else say that they only have 500 square miles of imagery. Looking at Google Earth, assuming the new imagery is the kinda-rectangular patch that is all the same color/brightness - they have approx 1700 square miles. That means there is approximately 600,000 work units in total that need done. If everone does a square mile (shouldn't take more than an hour) then we need 1700 people helping.
But as someone else noted - they're really artificially limiting the search area, considering the range on his plane. Assuming he went certain places or crashed on his way back to the ranch. That doesn't bode well.
PS: It'd be way way more effective if they showed a "image before crash" so that people could self-discover their false positives, without forcing people to download google earth and figure it's before/after out, and/or be smart enough to copy/paste the coords into google-maps satellite view.
PPS: If they were really smart, they'd have a second private pool of the public's false positives being reviewed by amateurs or employees whom they know have much much smaller false positive rates, whom they know are comparing the two available before images (google maps and google earth) against the current images.
BTW: Here are images of the actual specific plane he was flying. http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N240R.html (Aviation buffs take pictures and index online everything that flies, apparently
From Wikipedia, because I can be arsed to hit Google for 5 seconds...
"On February 1, 2007, the DigitalGlobe satellite did a scan of the area, generating thousands of images.[9] The images were posted to Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to distribute the work of searching through them, in hopes of spotting his boat.
"On February 16, 2007, the Friends of Jim Gray Group suspended their search,[10] but continue to follow any important leads. The family ended its search May 31, 2007. The massive high-tech effort did not reveal any new clues.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.