Search For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Facilitated By Crowdsourcing

Search For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Facilitated By Crowdsourcing

Thousands of volunteers have started to comb part of the search zone of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 using satellite images made available by DigitalGlobe on the internet. The Colorado-based company owns the most advanced commercial satellite network in the world.

According to DigitalGlobe’s Luke Barrington, the situation is like an actual needle-in-a-haystack issue with the haystack located in the ocean. However, he added that they are asking volunteers to put a mark on anything that appears interesting. The effort aims to identify anything found floating in the middle of the ocean.

The satellite images of the company have the capability of capturing details down to the size of a home plate. Barrington said it will not be possible for the company to locate items in large areas, making it necessary to obtain help from volunteers to check images uploaded into Tombod.com, one of the websites of the company.

Forty-three-year-old Mike Seberger was able to locate a silhouette that has the same size as the Boeing 777-200. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a Boeing 777-200. Seberger said he initially skipped the silhouette, but he scrolled back and thought it resembled a plane. Despite his discovery, Seberger still had doubts. Although the silhouette resembled a plane, he felt it may have been a boat.

The officials of Tomnod.com and DigitalGlobe have not yet responded to the discovery of Seberger. Seberger indicated that an error page would sometimes come out on the website of the company. No statements were released by the officials of the company.

The global crowdsourcing campaign of the company was launched by the company following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. A similar campaign was also launched following the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippiens.

Aside from the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the company also utilized its technology to takes pictures of the Sochi Olympics.

Posted by James Fried on Thursday March 13 2014, 5:19 AM EST. Ref: CNN. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0