Some of the remote imagery sources considered during the search for Jim Gray.

RADARSAT- 1 A commercial earth-observing satellite (eos) from Canada, whose products are distributed by MdA Geospatial services. nAsA has access to
rAdArsAt- 1 data, in exchange for having provided a rocket to launch the satellite; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rAdArsAt-1

A commercial eos operated by Geoeye (u.s.); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iKonos A commercial eos owned and operated by digital Globe (u.s.) in use at the time by Google earth and Microsoft virtual earth; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickbird

ER- 2 A high-altitude aircraft operated by nAsA similar to the u.s. Air Force u2-s reconnaissance platform; http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/

research/Airsci/er-2/ index.html

SPOT- 5 A commercial eos operated by sPot image (France); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sPot\ _(satellites)

Envisat A commercial eos launched by the european space Agency. data products are distributed by the sArCoM consortium,

created and led by sPot image; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/envisat

Ikonos QuickBird

 

and, given the sense of urgency, it was often difficult to decide whether to bring them to the attention of busy people: the Coast Guard, the police, Gray’s family, and technical experts in image analysis and oceanography. In some cases, tipsters got in contact repeatedly, and it became necessary to assemble conversations over several days to establish a particular tipster’s credibility. This became burdensome as email volume grew.

Discussion. On reflection, the organization’s evolution was one of the most interesting aspects of its development. Leadership roles emerged fairly organically, and subgroups formed with little discussion or contention over process or outcome. Some people had certain baseline competencies; for example, the aircraft coordinator was a recreational pilot, and the analysis coordinator had both management experience and contacts with image-processing experts in industry and government. In general, though, leadership developed by individuals stepping up to take responsibility and others stepping back to let them do their jobs, then jumping in to help as needed. The grace with which this happened was a bit surprising, given the kind of ambitious people who had surrounded Gray, and the fact that the organization evolved largely through email. The evolution of the team seems worthy of a case study in ad hoc organizational development during crisis.

It became clear that better software
is needed to facilitate group communi-
cation and coordination during crises.
By the end of the search for Tenacious—
February 16, 2007—various standard
communication methods were in use,
including point-to-point email and te-
lephony, broadcast via blogs and Web
pages, and multicast via conference
calls, wikis, and mailing lists. This mix
of technologies was natural and expe-
dient in the moment but meant com-
munication and coordination were a
challenge. It was difficult to work with
the information being exchanged, rep-
resented in natural-language text and
stored in multiple separate reposito-
ries. As a matter of expedience in the
first week, the communications co-
ordinator relied on mental models of
basic information, like who knew what
information and who was working on
what tasks. Emphasizing mental note
taking made sense in the short term
but limited the coordinator’s ability to
share responsibility with others as the
“crisis watch” extended from hours to
days to weeks.

Imagery Acquisition

When the volunteer search began, our hope was to use our special skills and resources to augment the Coast Guard with satellite imagery and private planes. However, as we learned, real-time search for boats at sea is not as simple as getting a satellite feed from a mapping service or borrowing a private jet.

Experience. The day after Tenacious
went missing, Gray’s friends and col-
leagues began trying to access satellite
imagery and planes. One of the first
connections was to colleagues in earth
science with expertise in remote sens-
ing. In an email message in the first few
days concerning the difficulty of using
satellite imagery to find Tenacious, one
earth scientist said, “The problem is
that the kind of sensors that can see a
40ft (12m) boat have a correspondingly
narrow field of view, i.e., they can’t see
too far either side of straight down…
So if they don’t just happen to be over-
head when you need them, you may
have a long wait before they show up
again. …[A]t this resolution, it’s strictly
target-of-opportunity.”
Undeterred, the team pursued mul-
tiple avenues to acquire remote imag-
ery through connections at NASA and
other government agencies, as well as
at various commercial satellite-imag-
ery providers, while the satellite-data
teams at both Google and Microsoft
directed us to their commercial pro-