Using the crowd for mountain rescue

The cloud has proved pretty adept at sifting through large chunks of information to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.  Galaxy Zoo was arguably the most well known such project, with amateur star gazers deployed to categorise and tag galaxies.

A new project called AeroSee is hoping to recruit similarly enthusiastic volunteers to help support Patterdale Mountain Rescue in the Lake District.  Each year the service comes to the aid of hundreds of injured and missing people, with the average search taking several hours and requiring numerous volunteers.

The AeroSee experiment will use unmanned air vehicles (or drones to you and I) that are guided by the crowd to help improve the process.

When a rescue call is received, the drone is dispatched to scan the area.  The footage from the drone is then processed, with the cloud based volunteers helping to scan and identify photos and images from the drone.  A successful sighting of the injured party is then relayed to the control centre, who dispatch the rescue team.

 

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The service also offers a practice facility so you can hone your skills before having a go at the real thing.  Whilst it’s a relatively niche topic area, it’s certainly one with some promise, and it will be interesting to see it develop.

Sign up to volunteer here http://aerosee.org/

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3 thoughts on “Using the crowd for mountain rescue

  1. Nice project. I wonder what kind of people it will attract? There are obviously lots of amateur star gazers. Are there lots of amateur mountain rescue people?

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