#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 127 – Public Intelligence Blog

Launching a Search and Rescue Challenge for Drone / UAV Pilots

My colleague Timothy Reuter (of AidDroids fame) kindly invited me to co-organize the Drone/UAV Search and Rescue Challenge for the DC Drone User Group. The challenge will take place on May 17th near Marshall in Virginia. The rules for the competition are based on the highly successful Search/Rescue challenge organized by my new colleague Chad with the North Texas Drone User Group. We’ll pretend that a person has gone missing by scattering (over a wide area) various clues such pieces of clothing and personal affects. Competitors will use their UAVs to collect imagery of the area and will have 45 minutes after flying to analyze the imagery for clues.

. . . . . . .

I want to try something new with this challenge. While previous competitions have focused exclusively on the use of drones/UAVs for the “Search” component of the challenge, I want to introduce the option of also engaging in the “Rescue” part. How? If UAVs identify a missing person, then why not provide that person with immediate assistance while waiting for the Search and Rescue team to arrive on site? The UAV could drop a small and light-weight first aid kit, or small water bottle, or even a small walkie talkie. Enter my new colleague Euan Ramsay who has been working on a UAV payloader solution for Search and Rescue; see the video demo below. Euan, who is based in Switzerland, has very kindly offered to share several payloader units for our UAV challenge. So I’ll be meeting up with him next month to take the units back to DC for the competition.

Read full article.

2014/03/222014/03/22

Ted Shulman: When using open source makes you an enemy of the state

#OSE Open Source Everything, Commerce, Corruption, Government

When using open source makes you an enemy of the state

The US copyright lobby has long argued against open source software – now Indonesia's in the firing line for encouraging the idea in government departments

Bobbie Johnson

The Guardian, 23 February 2010

It's only Tuesday and already it's been an interesting week for the world of digital rights. Not only did the British government changed the wording around its controversial ‘three strikes' proposals, but the secretive anti-counterfeiting treaty, Acta, was back in the headlines. Meanwhile, a US judge is still deliberating over the Google book settlement.

As if all that wasn't enough, here's another brick to add to the teetering tower of news, courtesy of Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh.

Guadamuz has done some digging and discovered that an influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy – or even worse.

What?

Continue reading “Ted Shulman: When using open source makes you an enemy of the state”

2014/03/212014/03/21

Stephen E. Arnold: Open Source Management – A Work in Progress

#OSE Open Source Everything, Cultural Intelligence

Open Source Management: A Work in Progress

I have attended a couple of “open source” events over the year. Most of the attendees are male, serious, bright, and similar to the fellows in my advanced high school math class and our math club.

The few women present were notable because there were so darned few of them. I attended the first Lucene Revolution with two exceptionally competent females, one a law librarian and one a PhD in operations management.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Open Source Management – A Work in Progress”

2014/03/19

Berto Jongman: First Organizational Chart Flows With Function Not Rank

Design

The First Org Chart Ever Made Is a Masterpiece of Data Design

By Liz Stinson

WIRED, 03.18.14

EXTRACT

As the Erie Railway grew, so did the amount of data it had to wrangle: which superintendents were responsible for which set of tracks; schedule changes; who the various conductors, laborers and brakemen worked under. As Caitlin Rosenthal writes over at McKinsey Quarterly, if any one data point was mismanaged it could bring dire results: “One delayed train, for example, could disrupt the progress of many others. And the stakes were high: with engines pulling cars in both directions along a single set of rails, schedule changes risked the deadly crashes that plagued 19th-century railroads.”

This flowery organizational chart was created by Daniel McCallum, the company’s general manager, to efficiently deliver critical information and delegate tasks to the right person. Instead of a top-down structure, the chart flows from its roots like a tree. The power was centralized with the president and board of directors as its anchor, but much of the day-to-day responsibility over the tracks was allocated to lower-level superintendents. The reasoning for this, Rosenthal writes: “They possessed the best operating data, were closer to the action, and thus were best placed to manage the line’s persistent inefficiencies.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: First Organizational Chart Flows With Function Not Rank”

2014/03/152014/03/15

Patrick Meier: Crowd-Sourcing and Malaysian Airlines (2)

Crowd-Sourcing

Results of the Crowdsourced Search for Malaysia Flight 370

EXTRACT

If these digital efforts continue and Flight 370 has indeed been hijacked, then this will certainly be the first time that crowdsourced satellite imagery analysis is used to find a hijacked aircraft. The latest satellite imagery uploaded by Tomnod is no longer focused on bodies of water but rather land. The blue strips below (left) is the area that the new satellite imagery covers.

Some important questions will need to be addressed if this operation is indeed extended. What if the hijackers make contact and order the cessation of all offline and online Search & Rescue operations? Would volunteers be considered “digital combatants,” potentially embroiled in political conflict in which the lives of 227 hostages are at stake?

Read full post.

Analyzing Tweets on Malaysia Flight #MH370

My QCRI colleague Dr. Imran is using our AIDR platform (Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response) to collect & analyze tweets related to Malaysia Flight 370 that went missing several days ago. He has collected well over 850,000 English-language tweets since March 11th; using the following keywords/hashtags: Malaysia Airlines flight, #MH370m #PrayForMH370 and #MalaysiaAirlines.

Read full post.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Crowd-Sourcing and Malaysian Airlines (2)”

2014/03/142014/03/14

Jean Lievens: Paracity High Tech Slums as Solution

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Design, Materials, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

PARACITY

“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”
– Samuel Beckett

Paracity is a biourban organism that is growing on the principles of Open Form: individual design-build actions generating spontaneous communicative reactions on the surrounding built human environment and this organic constructivist dialog leading into self-organized community structures, development and knowledge building.

The growing organism the Paracity is based on a three dimensional wooden primary structure, organic grid with spatial modules of 6 x 6 x 6 metres (6 meters is approximately 18 feet)constructed out of CLT cross-laminated timber sticks. This simple structure can be modified and grown by the community members working as teams or by an assigned Paracity constructor.

Paracity’s self-sustainable biourban growth is backed up by off-the-grid environmental technology solutions providing methods for water purification, energy production, organic waste treatment, waste water purification and sludge recycling. These modular plug-in components can be adjusted according to the growth of the Paracity and moreover, the whole Paracity is designed not only to treat and circulate its own material streams, but to start leaching waste from its host city becoming a positive urban parasite following the similar kind of symbiosis as in-between slums and the surrounding city. In a sense Paracity is a high-tech slum, which can start tuning the industrial city towards an ecologically more sustainable direction.

Learn more — superb range of photographs and graphics.

2014/03/11

Jean Lievens: LOOMIO – building public infrastructure tool for decision-making, held in the commons

Access, Crowd-Sourcing, Governance, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Software

BRING LOOMIO TO THE WORLD

LOOMIO is free and open-source software for anyone, anywhere, to participate in decisions that affect them.

“The world needs a better way to make decisions together. #Loomio is building it. You can help: http://thndr.it/1kaQhmy”

We’re a small team of open-source developers, facilitators and activists in New Zealand. On Tuesday March 11, we're crowdfunding to build a totally inclusive platform so anyone anywhere can participate in decisions that affect them. It's called Loomio 1.0.

Learn more, support options.

LOOMIO Home Page

Category: #OSE Open Source Everything

Launching a Search [Eyes] and Rescue [Payload] Challenge for [Mini] Drone / UAV Pilots