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How Data Science Powered the Search for MH370 (hpe.com)
"In the absence of physical evidence, scientists are employing powerful computational tools to attempt to solve the greatest aviation mystery of our time: the disappearance of flight MH370." Slashdot reader Esther Schindler shared this article from HPE Insights:
Satellite communications provider Inmarsat announced it had found recorded signals in its archives that MH370 had sent for another six hours after it disappeared. The plane had been aloft and flying for that whole time -- but where had it gone? As Inmarsat scientists examined the signals, they saw that what they had was not data such as text messages or location information. Rather, the signals contained metadata: information about the signal itself. This was recorded as the satellite automatically contacted the plane's communications system every hour to see if it was still logged on. Bafflingly, whoever had taken the plane hadn't used the satcom system to communicate with the outside world, but had switched it off and then on again, leaving it able to exchange hourly "pings" with the satellite. Some of the metadata related to extremely subtle variations in the frequency of the signal. "We're talking about changes as big as one part in a billion," says Inmarsat scientist Chris Ashton.
Nobody had tried to use this kind of data to try to locate an airplane before. At first, Ashton's team didn't know if the attempt would work. But painstakingly, over the course of weeks, the team figured out how the movement of the plane, the orbital wobble of the satellite, and the electronics within the satcom system all interacted to create the data values that had been received. "We had to create the model from scratch," Ashton says. Their work revealed that the plane had flown into the remote southern Indian Ocean. They didn't know where exactly. But since there are no islands in that part of the world, it was impossible that anyone could have survived. For the first time in history, hundreds of people were declared legally dead based on mathematics alone.
Then mathematician Dr. Neil Gordon led a team from the Defense Science and Technology Group "to extract a path from a subset of the Inmarsat data called the Burst Timing Offset. This measured how quickly the aircraft responded each time the satellite pinged it, and was used to determine the distance between the satellite and the plane." They ultimately generate "a probabilistic 'heat map' of the plane's most likely resting places using a technique called Bayesian analysis. These calculations allowed the DSTG team to draw a box 400 miles long and 70 miles across, which contained about 90 percent of the total probability distribution.
Nobody had tried to use this kind of data to try to locate an airplane before. At first, Ashton's team didn't know if the attempt would work. But painstakingly, over the course of weeks, the team figured out how the movement of the plane, the orbital wobble of the satellite, and the electronics within the satcom system all interacted to create the data values that had been received. "We had to create the model from scratch," Ashton says. Their work revealed that the plane had flown into the remote southern Indian Ocean. They didn't know where exactly. But since there are no islands in that part of the world, it was impossible that anyone could have survived. For the first time in history, hundreds of people were declared legally dead based on mathematics alone.
Then mathematician Dr. Neil Gordon led a team from the Defense Science and Technology Group "to extract a path from a subset of the Inmarsat data called the Burst Timing Offset. This measured how quickly the aircraft responded each time the satellite pinged it, and was used to determine the distance between the satellite and the plane." They ultimately generate "a probabilistic 'heat map' of the plane's most likely resting places using a technique called Bayesian analysis. These calculations allowed the DSTG team to draw a box 400 miles long and 70 miles across, which contained about 90 percent of the total probability distribution.
"Their work revealed that the plane had flown into the remote southern Indian Ocean. They didn't know where exactly."
Amazing stuff.
all that science worked well!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If Shia Labeouf were on the plane, 4chan could have found it in less than 24 hours.
Perhaps you shouldn't gloat about how great your Data Science is, if you haven't actually achieved your one goal.
The "ringing phones" isn't a thing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How about we just forego all this back patting until the plane is found?
Everybody would not be needing to comb over minute pieces of data and vast esoteric computations if service providers had behaved better.
The satellite service was capable of gathering the gps data from the plane instantaneously and throughout its flight path. But the satellite company was charging for it, and Malaysian authorities did not want to pay for it presumably because it cost too much.
If the gps location service had been available for this flight, one can't help but wonder if there was a possible intervention that could have been undertaken when the plane would have been discovered wildly off course, and even though it appears the crash was not survivable, the quick crash site discovery and possible apprehension of possible criminals involved (if there are any).
As it is, everybody was chintzy all the way around at the expense of the safety of the flying public.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Where were the editors? HPE's not Slashdot's.
Then mathematician Dr. Neil Gordon led a team from the Defence Science and Technology Group...
Given that this is a proper noun the article's spelling is incorrect even in the US. The rest of the world is constantly making allowance for US spelling but it seems that the favour is not being returned.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
While the theoretical model has been carefully studied (See for example, http://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/... ), I'm not aware if any entity ever validated the model by actually flying an aircraft along one of the potential flight paths and comparing the ping times and doppler offsets from the theoretical model with an actual flight path. Does anyone know if that was ever done? Second best would be to compare the metadata from some other known flight with that flight's actual path.
As I recall, there actually was a possible motive. He had a friend who was on trial for the crime of homosexual conduct. Yes, that's right, we're not talking 1940's UK here, we're talking about the 21st century. I'm by no means left-leaning and I think it's pretty dumb. I seem to recall but not very well that there was also something going on where his wife and kids had moved out.
And yeah, he was a flight simulator junkie and could easily have planned and practiced this from his own house. Of course flight simulators wouldn't have had the subtle detail of the pings on an unsubscribed satellite link, so if he really did do it, he wouldn't have known he was leaving a trail behind, no matter how faint.
I think he very probably snapped and decided he wanted to punish the Malaysian government by crashing a plane where it couldn't be found. Little did he know that they would get a double whammy a few months later over the Ukraine. I hope they find the damn plane already so we can see what the fuck really happened.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
CNN has been shit for a lot longer than that.
Yeah, CNN isn't the greatest. Tell you what - supply your "source" and we'll compare reputations :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Somewhat speculation on my part, but cell phones that have been spuriously disconnected from a network can cause issues for the related telephone networks trying to ring through to them, especially when they were last associated with less developed switching systems. If I pull the battery from my phone, the number of rings before voice mail is reached becomes erratic (T-mobile). If the phones still worked in any capacity, there'd be significant amounts of data (in any of the telecom systems along the routes) to attest to this, owing to people from many origins systems trying to ring them. Simplest explanation ("something" happened, plane flew on autopilot until fuel exhaustion and crashed) is likely the least-incorrect one here, at least in my opinion.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
While I generally disagree with your original post, CNN is inherently an absolutely awful citation.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
That's the epoch you chose? I'll admit, they've been on the decline, but I hope you don't seriously believe it started there.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
CNN is well known as a middle-of-the-road, trustworthy source.
You sound a like a nutter sheep. Bahahahahahaha little sheep bahahahahahaha! Just bleet out whatever the newsvertainment outlet told you to.
I'd be a whole lot more impressed about the performance of "Big Data" if the submarine ROVs had found any trace of the aircraft. Right now, what they have is a big fat NOTHING. Some control surfaces washed up on islands a thousand miles away are not indicative of the performance of any sort of data analysis.
Solves nothing.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
RWNJ ALERT, Cunt hates truth, whimpers fake news.
Umm, hold up, folks.
Don't declare victory until the airframe is found.
.
Kriston
Anyone keep reading these headlines and thinking it's the new Intel chipset?
This post comes too early. First find the damn thing, then boast about how this or that method helped finding it.
How about declared dead after they couldn't find the plane for over 9 months and no one had established contact?
This article is a load of crap. It's an example of how these data models have failed to achieve anything useful. Firstly after almost 2 years they announced that they were looking in the wrong place: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/... and also that they were confident that after spending $200m the plane was not in the search area they established. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
Good work big data!
That is merely a bit more special RF signal analysis engineering and not so much different from other radio-location tasks, although you usually have more data. Calling this "Data Science" is nonsense.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't recall having heard anything from them in quite some time, I'm not really the newsy sort. Apologies, but all I receive is what filters in from folks around me (who I typically disregard for similar reasons). News agencies tend to exposit their information without citing sources, often making them a dead-end citation.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
There was a similar aircraft where the oxygen bottle for the pilots broke its valve top and shot out the side of the aircraft like a rocket, putting a decent-sized hole in the fuselage (A foot or two in diameter). Turning off all the electronics breakers is consistent with fighting an electrical fire. So the theory would be - the pilots' oxygen bottle, in the radio bay below them, starts leaking, producing an oxygen-rich environment underneath them in the electrical hold - an electrical spark then results in a fire, so they immediately turn off the electrics. The oxygen bottle then fails and departs the aircraft putting a big hole in the fuselage; the pilots put on their masks and begin emergency procedures, turn the aircraft around about 180 and program the heading back to the nearest airport on the Malay peninsula. It would take a while for the pilots to realize they have no oxygen, by which point they are probably passing out, before they can program the autopilot for a lower flight level, a rather complex task for an oxygen-starved brain. I'm not sure I believe the Malaysians or Indonesians claiming on somewhat shakey grounds that they tracked the aircraft meandering - possibly that's an excuse for not having good radar data. Most likely, it follows the course set toward the nearest airport, keeps going over the Malay peninsula and Aceh, and out into the ocean. The passengers have 15 minutes or so of oxygen in those drop-down masks, so by the time they realize there's a problem in the cockpit they probably can't do anything about it, and also pass out. The aircraft flies on with it's programmed direction, everyone either passed out or dead or frozen, until it runs out of fuel. Does it stay level until it stalls, or gracefully glide down at greater than stall speed? Do some of the occupants wake up when the aircraft is low enough, only to watch it hit the water in the middle of nowhere?
I'm so impressed. With all this sophisticated data science they know exactly where it is. The only problem is that they haven't found the airplane. They know where it is. They really do. It's just that they haven't found it. Another :"WIN" for science!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Having worked a lot in aviation (even specifically with Inmarsat) I really doubt these results, even beyond the statement that they created this model from scratch (and thus unverified/untested). Navigation isn't even very accurate in planes, so much so that you have things like NAT tracks ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) which establish fixed routes across the Atlantic where there is little radar coverage, GPS is not complete ( see RAIM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) and often inaccurate. They need the fixed tracks so that planes don't run into eachother and actually make it across, almost blind. Over land, airports and whatnot broadcast an analog signal that basically says what's nearby and where they are, and based on these a plane can normally tell where it is. The point is -- planes generally don't know where they are, and if they do it's because of a combination of equipment, so the inmarsat ping doesn't contain something like "I received this at XXX N by YYY E". To think that you could track a plane at all with things such as latency to a signal is either the biggest breakthrough in avionic nav ever, or a load of crock.
If you're not going to go whole-hog and measure a metric ton of horse shit every day to filter out the very small amount of source data implied by it, then yeah, you're best off just not believing anything.
If you disbelieve everything you're almost there. The problem is, people want to believe something, but they don't want to admit that everybody is full of shit and that it would be a huge amount of work just to figure out what was actually claimed, and what was implied through phrasing but wasn't actually part of the data. In the end if you put the work in, there is a small amount of moderate, dispassionate middle-of-the-road data available, and everything else is a bunch of shrill horseshit.
For me it is a hobby; I started reading the papers on a daily basis in 3rd grade. If you spend enough time at it, a lot of the lies become standard ones that the exact same talking heads spew both sides of depending on the politics of the day, and so the filters do have opportunities to improve over time. The only problem is, the hobby is more likely to interesting to people who credulously run down rabbit holes than to people who are comfortable declaring most of it to be bullshit day after day.
It is easy to say that everything is bullshit, it is harder to say, "They don't know, and neither do I!" The more natural human tendency is, "They don't know, so let me tell you!"