Plane search takes hold of Bay residents

WHILE they are separated by more than half a century in age, two Nelson Mandela Bay residents have been sharing an important, common international goal – that of finding any trace of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane and the 239 on board. In Walmer, Port Elizabeth, Cameron Pittaway, 9, has been spending his spare time online scouring thousands of satellite images for oil slicks, life rafts and ships – in fact any sign of flight MH370 which went missing after taking off from an airport in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on March 8. Halfway across the city, in Central, Mike Watson, 65, has been frequenting an internet cafe, forking out his own cash to participate in the same internet-based search. Drawn by curiosity, the uniqueness of the project and a genuine desire to assist, the two residents have, for more than a week, been doing their best to stand out in a very large "crowd". The "crowd", which has grown to include more than three million people across the world, refers to an online activity known as crowdsourcing and it is being used, alongside many other efforts to trace the aircraft, to provide a shared platform for individuals to scan millions of satellite images for any signs of the Boeing 777. In what, according to online reports, may now be the largest crowdsourcing project of its kind, satellite company DigitalGlobe has made satellite images covering 24000km² available on the internet though its Tomnod platform. More images are being added from the company's five satellites daily, which include a new area in the Indian Ocean after search authorities this week expanded the initial search area from the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. According to reports the chance of finding the aircraft through this method is along the lines of the needle in a haystack, which makes the point of the crowdsourcing project rather an exercise in identifying areas where the plane is not. But this saves time and resources for professional image analysts and physical search- and-rescue authorities. To date, more than 257 million "map views" have been recorded and 2.9 million areas have been "tagged" by participants spotting something on the maps they have viewed. Among these are maps tagged by the shy Clarendon Primary School pupil, who, by the time he was interviewed by The Herald earlier this week, had already viewed more than 2375 images. "This is really exciting," he said, revealing he had spotted oil slicks and what appeared to be boats or ships. Cameron's father, Tim, an agriculture lecturer at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, said he thought it was a worthwhile exercise. Cameron said he believed the aircraft might have landed on hard ground somewhere, a view echoed by Watson, who had poured through 728 images by the time he was interviewed by The Herald. "I saw this on TV and since I was following the whole story, I thought I would get involved. I find this very interesting and of course, if you see something, it might prove to be a great help to the authorities searching for the aircraft, and the families of the passengers and crew," he said. - Shaun Gillham

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