Millions track for MH370, floating suitcases found in Malacca

 
1. WASHINGTON: Three million people have joined an effort led by a satellite operator to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, in what may be the largest crowd sourcing project of its kind.
2. The satellite firm DigitalGlobe said that its search area now has  some 24,000 square kilometres (9,000 square miles) and that more images are  being added daily, including a new area in the Indian Ocean.
3. The company said more than three million people have participated in the program, with some 257 million “map views” and 2.9 million areas “tagged” by participants.
4. DigitalGlobe activated its crowd sourcing platform called Tomnod on March 11, inviting the public to look at the imagery from its five high-definition satellites to help in the search.
5. The response was so great it overloaded the system’s computers for a time last week. The company uses an algorithm called CrowdRank to determine the most promising leads, paying close attention to overlap where people tagged the same location.
6. “DigitalGlobe’s expert analysts will examine the tags to identify the top 10 or so most notable areas and share the information with customers and authorities,” a statement said.
7. Although no definitive records are kept on crowd sourcing, this effort is likely one of the largest in history, and Digital Globe said it was bigger than the relief effort for Typhoon Haiyan last November in the Philippines.
8. “While this crowd sourced effort is unlikely to find the missing Malaysia Flight 370, it may help to identify where the aircraft is not located, thus saving critical time for the professional image analysts and responders.”  
9. Crowd sourcing may have helped responders in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy in the eastern US and was also used during the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. But crowd sourcing also pointed in the wrong direction after last year’s Boston Marathon bombings. Effective use of crowdsourcing needs hefty computing power which can separate good leads from bad ones, and that this is improving. —AFP.
10. Meanwhile in Malacca Straits, a Greek petrochemical tank was asked to keep an eye out for ‘floating suitcases’ at the Straits of Malacca here yesterday. Elka Athina, a barge heading to Suez was alerted by Indonesian authorities over radio, warning them that they were ‘approaching a field of debris’. Several Greek news portals, Tovima and Times of Change were abuzz as sources from the barge alerted them over the apparent sighting. The portals reported several other barges passing the the busy straits were ‘rushed’ to a coordinate off Sumatran waters.
11. Another Greek portal published an audio interview with a first officer of the ship, claiming that it was steaming towards a ‘debrs zone’ in the northern waters of the Malacca Strait.
12. However, checks with online ship tracking websites revealed that the tanker had sailed passed the debris field at about 9.30pm (Malaysia Time). It is believed that authorities had red flagged a possible area in the straits after users of the map crowdsourcing site Tomnod have indicated a possible debris field in the Straits of Malacca.
13. A twitter user, Richard Barrow, posted a satellite image of ‘a potential crash site’ and ‘possible floating seats’ on the surface of the ocean at coordinate 5°39'08.0"N 98°50'38.0"E.
14. The search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has come to a gruelling 10th day, with over 20 countries involved in the search of the missing aircraft which had deviated from its flight path last Saturday. It was carrying 239 people, and was heading to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
15. The search is now focused on two possible corridors, stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand; or Southern coordinator, stretching form Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean, after satellites received pings from the aircraft, nearly six hours after it was reported to have disappeared.