There is a story that Ikonos is going to redirect a satellite to do a high-res shot of the area where CNet editor James Kim is missing in Oregon. That’s good, though sadly, too late, but they also report not knowing what to do with the data.
I frankly think that while satellite is good, for something like this, traditional aerial photography is far better, because it’s higher resolution, higher contrast, can be done under clouds, can be done at other than a directly overhead angle, is generally cheaper and on top of all this can possibly be done from existing searchplanes.
But what to do with such hi-res data? Load it into a geo-browsing system like Google Earth or Google Maps or Microsoft Live. Let volunteers anywhere in the world comb through the images and look for clues about the missing person or people. Ideally, allow the map to be annotated so that people don’t keep reporting the same clues or get tricked by the same mistakes. (In addition to annotation, you would want to track which areas had been searched the most, and offer people suggested search patterns that cover unsearched territory or special territory of interest.)
These techniques are too late for Kim, but the tools could be ready for the next missing person, so that a plane could be overflying an area on short notice, and the data processed and up within just minutes of upload and stitching.
Right now Google’s tools don’t have any facility for looking at shots from an angle, while Microsoft’s do but without the lovely interface of Keyhole/Google Earth. Angle shots can do things like see under some trees, which could be important. This would be a great public service for some company to do, and might actually make searches far faster and cheaper. Indeed, in time, people who are lost might learn that, if they can’t flash a mirror at a searchplane, they should find a spot with a view of the sky and build some sort of artificial glyph on the ground. If there were a standard glyph, algorithms could even be written to search for it in pictures. With high-res aerial photography the glyph need not be super large.
Update: It’s also noted the Kims had a cell phone, and were found because their phone briefly synced with a remote tower. They could have been found immediately if rescue crews had a small mini-cell base station (for all cell technologies) that could be mounted in a regular airplane and flown over the area. People might even know to turn on their cell phone if they are conserving power if they heard a plane. (In a car with a car charger, you can leave the phone on.) As soon as the plane gets within a few miles (range is very good for sky-based antenna) you could just call and ask “where are you?” or, in the sad case where they can’t answer, find it with signal strength or direction finding. There are plans to build cell stations to be flown over disaster areas, but this would be just a simple unit able to handle just one call. It could be a good application for software radio, which is able to receive on all bands at once with simple equipment, at a high cost in power. No problem on a plane.
Speaking of rescue, I should describe one of my father’s inventions from the 70s. He designed a very simple “sight” to be placed on a mirror. First you got a mirror (or piece of foil) and punched a hole in it you could look through. In his fancy version, he had a tube connected to the mirror with wires, but it could be handheld. The tube itself had a smaller exit hole (like a washer glued to the end of a toilet paper cardboard tube.)
Anyway, you could look through the hole in your mirror, sight the searchplane through the washer in the cardboard tube and adust the mirror so the back of the washer is illumnated by the sunlight from the mirror. Thus you could be sure you were flashing sunlight at the plane on a regular basis. He tried to sell military on putting a folded mirror and sighting tube in soldier’s rescue kits. You could probably do something with your finger in a pinch though, just put your finger next to the plane and move the mirror so your finger lights up. Kim didn’t think of it, but taking one of the mirrors off his car would have been a good idea as he left on his trek.
