Update on the Search for Steve Fossett (Update 3)

Update 3 We know many of you are anxious to learn what happened to your search submissions. Full details on areas screened and passed on to the Steve Fossett Search and Rescue team are at: s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/index.html.

Important Update2! Thanks for the great feedback. We found this great tool for submitting your coordinates manually - http://www.violentskies.com/search-for-steve-fossett/index.html. Users are encouraged to use this tool as it would help us aggregate and organize the search results and most importantly not miss any results because every response is important.

Important Update! Thanks to all the thousands of people making this a full-time job! Please read these guidelines before reporting a find here. (1) If you find a likely location, submit it as a "yes" in Mechanical Turk. Please do not post here! The team is reviewing, and most of these "likely" observations are being reported by mutiple people. Only by using the official process are we able to aggregate feedback on a given tile of imagery. (2) If you wander off in Google Earth looking around, it is easy to wander out of the search dataset and into old images that are not relevant to the search. Another reason to register and use the images in Mechanical Turk per-se, rather than flipping back and forth between Google Earth. (3) However if you still want to post a manual set of coordinates, best to do so at http://turksearch.wordpress.com

Recently I blogged about the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk to scale out the search for Steve Fossett. As a pilot who used to be involved in traditional Search and Rescue efforts, this form of innovation is incredible. Someone's fate no longer depends solely on a relatively small number of aircraft; instead a large number of people can quickly search and cross-check high-resolution images.

If you have not yet helped in the search, please visit www.mturk.com to pitch in.

So it seems appropriate to provide some feedback to all of the tens of thousands of people who have helped in the search. Accordingly, the following is straight from the product team:

Workers: thanks for your continued support!

Since launching the search for Steve Fossett, the support from the Mechanical Turk worker community has been outstanding. To date, tens of thousands of Steve Fossett searchers have completed millions of HITs. Your support in reviewing hundreds of thousands of images, covering thousands of square miles of terrain, has generated a number of highly credible leads. This effort has filtered the images down to less than 0.03% of images received.

After you submit each HIT, Mechanical Turk compares your answer to those received from workers looking at the same image. As highly rated images are identified, experts review them using Google Earth and pass the most promising leads directly to search teams.

Images are made available through the support of providers GeoEye, DigitalGlobe and Sanborn. Teams at Google prepare the raw images into the tiles. Data is then processed using EC2 and stored in S3 before being made available through Mechanical Turk.

Workers have already reviewed hundreds of thousands of images from GeoEye, and are now working on imagery from DigitalGlobe. We've just begun processing Sanborn data and will begin loading new HITs shortly.

Your continued participation is sincerely appreciated. Thanks for all your support.

So what have they found? Here's a couple of screenshots...

Experts reviewing each image have immediate access to the comments provided by workers as well as the percentage of workers who flagged the image.

After workers submits their HITs, responses are reviewed by experts using Google Earth to better examine the surrounding areas and evaluate each lead.

-- Mike

Comments

[Thomas jean-luc]

Bonjour,

J'ai trouvé un avion avec GOOGLES EARTH

i find a plane with googles earth

38°49'39.42 N
118°38'22.32 O

jlt

[robert m gassaway]

hi, I have notified several different people about an aircraft that I have found,and have posted the cords on 2 of the hits on mturk also. I have not heard back from either fossett's people or the people at the ranch conducting the search. judging from the number of aircraft having been found it may not be steve fossett's, but you never know. HOWEVER, I have a beef with the fact that there is no comunication as to whether they have checked out the aircraft I found. it greatly bothers me that they may be ignoring a viable target, and at the same time not identifying what HAS been found and where.they need to let the public know if they have found a viable target or if they already know about a target and that it HAS been checked.

I will give the cords to you one more time, and if I do not hear from you, I will investigate the crash site myself. the cords are as follows:

37.701950,-118.340967

I am 100% POSITIVE this is an airplane, and would like a response from someone that it has been checked out,
sencerily,
Robert m Gassaway

[Robert Brown]

This is a great application to help find Mr. Fossett. I have decades of photoiinterpretation experience and have been trying to go through as many images as possible. It would be nice to see a feedback site as to how many possible targets have been found and whether or not they have been checked off. Did Steve's plane have an autopilot? Could he have trimmed it for level flight and had a medical problem? Could the plane have continued on in level flight until its fuel was exhausted?

[oger Liliane]

38°16'45''80 N - 118°25'12''87 O ??

[Josee]

I have passed on those coordinates to authorities, thank you

[Josee]

I have passed on these coordinates to authorities by MTurk, Thank you!

[Peter Marquardt]

Great Job! Now we're able to see that at least something happens to our HITs 8-) I surely would like to have access to the list of positive hits just to have a look by myself (curiosity) but that would stop me from doing more relevant work like ... searching for Steve 8)

To Robert: You might have stumbled over *old* data. The plane you see there might have been there before SF was missing. Please have a look at

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/996724/an/0/page/0#996724

the Google Earth Community BBS, Topic: Earth -> Current Events -> STEVE FOSSETT-- IMPORTANT INFORMATION

which everyone should read before searching by hand...

Cheers,
Peter (2342 hits so far)

[Colin Peterson]

Great to have this report, I've looked at thousands of images (like many people, I'm sure), and needed to see some feedback. I only have one request, though I don't know how simple it would be to implement it: could we please have regular updates on the percentage of HITs submitted? I imagine you know, or can roughly project, the figure for the total number of HITs that will have been generated once this part of the search for SF is complete. If we know what percentage of those have been submitted, all of us out here submitting hits will have an idea how far down the road we are. Thanks.

[oger Liliane]

38°16'45''80 N - 118°25'12''87 O

[Just Wondering in Chicago]

I am not a techie, but can someone check out this location on Google Earth. I think I saw something orange and blue that looks like a plane.

38.4610.51N
119.731.34W

It's south of Yerington, NV. Also, can you please provde more specific dimensions of the plane and its wingspan on the Mechanical Turk site? Thanks.

[JEDC]

Image not very good try

38 30 47 68 N
188 59 06 76 W

[Freddy WILLEMS]

"just wondering in chicago"
You coordinates are not found ?
Can you give me the real exact coordinates ?
188 W = does not excist !

[oger Liliane]

exactement :38°16'46''02 N-118°25'16''75 O

[oger Liliane]

Un "gros" avion (a big flight ??)se trouve sur le nouveau morceau :
38°30'17''74 N- 119° 09' 30'' 37 0

[Bernhard Duetting]

Steve Fossett Google Earth search:

38°44'50.52" N 119°09'43.80" W

[Bernhard Duetting]

Steve Fossett Google Earth search:

38°44'50.52"N 119°09'43.80"W

[Mike Culver]

Folks -- if you have a likely coordinate, PLEASE submit it via Amazon Mechanical Turk. It gets into the system that way, and some of these coordinates are on standard (non search) Google images, which were taken long before Steve's flight.

[AyJay]

I have created a website that allows users with Fossett sights of interest to post for review by the Internet community. The website is here:
http://fossettsightings.blogspot.com/

[Otavio Pontes]

Something at 38 38' 28.82"N and 119 10' 10.89"

[Dax Litto]

Hello... I have a few important questions...
1) I have used the update link on Mechanical Turk, but am curious as to how I can determine if I have the updated images on Google Earth (using the most recent version of Google Earth). Reading reports on line, I have found the Flying M Ranch as a starting point from where the plane took-off (which I think is just off Hilton Rd and 3C - 38°36'21.14"N - 119° 0'11.08"W) The reports mentioned that a fleet of planes were being launched from that point, however, when I look at the ranch, I only see a few planes. The lack of planes in conjunction with the report makes me question the date of the image files.
2) The Sept 15 morning blog shows a great image of a plane, however, it is in open desert and not in a wooded area. It is my understanding other planes have also been found. Are the coordinates available on those sites so that one can become more familiar with Google Earth and also log existing sites?
3) A news report stated that a woman in Yosemite National Park heard a plane crash. Are those coordinates available? I have looked in the Sonora Pass region and there are a lot of lakes in that area. Any coordinates of where she was camping may be useful.

Thank you for your help. If you choose not to post this blog, please e-mail me at dlitto@pacbell.net.

[Martin Visser]

Bernhard, how does submit a random coordinate they have found using GE? I have reviewed 40 hits from the Turk, and then looked at the area using Google Earth. I found a suspicious 70m streak going perpendicular to the road - how do I submit this using Amazon Turk. (BTW the location is 38.6387,-119.117)

[Sergei]

Found no way to submit specific coordinates in mturk. GE: 38°36'13.40"N - 118°45'42.65"W

[Tatiana Oscarsson]

I found a blue aeroplane shaped blob/shadow in the brushes at the following co-ordinates.

38,39.28.70
119.10.40.02

I've tried to submit this through TURK but can't work out how.

Good luck with the search. For the sake of his family, I hope you find him.

[Rob-Pilot]

Can someone check out these coordinates. It looks like a plane - the coordinates are - 38 degrees 39' 03.54" N - 119 degrees 07' 05.60" W Please check out. I do not know how to submit. I found this on the latest Amazon Mechanical Turk - KML overlay from the S.F. website. Can someone blog back and verify that they think it is a plane?

[Bob Wozniak]

Please check here.

It defintely appears to be a crash site for a light aircraft.

The Aircraft Wreckage is located at: 38°37'26.00"N, 119° 5'52.56"W
The Impact sight is located at: 38°37'26.63"N, 119° 5'54.10"W

This was found scanning the newest images while using google earth.

Unfortunately there is no mechanism to send possible coordinates to the search experts
using the MechanicalTurk website unless they are contained in the HIT.

I did add it as a comment to another HIT location

What do you think? Does someone have access to the correct authorities?
Make sure to load the overlay image before looking at the above location

Bob Wozniak
Robert.Wozniak@gmail.com