MIT student leads project using balloons and kites to document Gulf Oil Extents

[flamingdem]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/oil-balloon-0517.html

MIT student leads project using balloons and kites to provide aerial documentation of the Gulf oil slick’s extent and effects

While the world’s news media report on the expanding oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, MIT Media Lab student Jeffrey Yoo Warren and his collaborators are providing their own useful coverage of the crisis.

Warren, Oliver Yeh ’10 and do-it-yourself cartographer Stewart Long have been using inexpensive cameras attached to ordinary helium-filled weather balloons, or even oversized trash bags, to capture aerial photos that are then stitched together and geometrically corrected using software Warren wrote (to compensate for camera angle and distortions) to make very accurate local maps. For example, last January Warren traveled to Peru to help citizens there meet a requirement to provide accurate maps of the lands they occupied in order to obtain the title to the lands — Warren’s mapping software enabled them to create those maps.

The team realized that in the Gulf oil spill, future lawsuits, as well as monitoring of environmental impacts from the spill, would depend on extensive, accurate documentation. So earlier this month, as crews tried unsuccessfully to contain the undersea oil leak, Warren and his colleagues took their technology to the Gulf Coast. Working with local groups such as the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an organization in New Orleans that focuses on industrial pollution, they trained volunteers to make and deploy the low-cost photography systems. “Now, they’re the local leads on this, and we provide the training and technical support,” Warren says. The systems can be suspended from balloons or kites, and all the equipment needed for one monitoring system can be bought for less than $100.

[ensho]

1. keep up the good work - we need everybody's help

hugs