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-