Aerial photography mapping to monitor the death of migrants at sea?

[Charles]

Hi there grassroots mappers!

Amazing work you guys are doing!!


We're a group of researchers from Goldsmiths University London,
supporting migrants rights organizations in Europe and North Africa to
document and bring accountability for the death of migrants at the
EU's maritime borders. http://www.forensic-architecture.org/homepage/fields/investigations/sea

We're setting up a platform - watchthemed.crowdmap.com - using all
kinds of technology to try to document and map violations in the
Mediterranean. We're doing this in collaboration with Boats4People, an
important international campaign that will take place this summer
between Italy and Tunisia, coalescing around a solidarity boat that
will travel between the two shores. http://www.boats4people.org

We thought of trying out drones-balloons to monitor the med, fly
banners, launching them from from the coast or the solidarity boat.
But for our project this summer - 1-20 July - it will be too tight for
us to experiment with this technology on our own...

We just wondered if someone in your community might be based in Italy
or Tunisia and just might want to experiment in support of our
project... or if their might be a really easy set up we could access
and fly from the solidarity boat ourselves?


A bit more technical info on the specific needs of the mission are
bellow.

Thanks for your attention on such a short notice, if not for this
time, we'll surely be in touch in the future!

Best, Charles

Mission description:

The main objective of the mission is monitoring the Central
Mediterranean – trying to identify migrants vessels in distress as
well as the vessels surrounding them - which is a serious challenge
using UAV attached cameras since we are talking about an extremely
large surface.

As a non-UAV specialist , I could imagine two possibilities:

1) flying a UAV from the solidarity boat during its travel from
Palermo to Monastir and back to Lampedusa, extending its vision so to
speak within a larger perimeter, exactly as military and coast guards
use helicopters operating from their deck. The main stages of the
boat's trajectory are:

- Palermo - Tunis: 7-10 July

- Tunis-Monastir (monitoring along the Tunisian coast): 11-14 July

- Monastir-Lampedusa: 16-19 July


2) flying a UAV from either the Tunisian coast at key points of
departure or from the island of Lampedusa’s coast, the point of
arrival of many migrants’ vessels. So here the UAV would be launched
from the coast at either end of the main migration axes:

- 1) Tripoli (12' 32.876174, 13.187507) – Lampedusa (35.508682,
12.592918)

- 2) Jarjis (33.503681, 11.11538) – Lampedusa (35.508682,
12.592918)

- 3) Sfax (34.745159, 10.7613) – Lampedusa (35.508682,
12.592918)


Key to defining the best solution would be knowing the autonomy of
your UAV: how long can it fly, over what distance?

[Shannon Dosemagen]

Hi Charles,

Thanks for reaching out, looks like you have an exciting project coming up! I'm not going to speak for the list because there might be individuals from Tunisia/Italy on it, but in terms of the easy set-up to use yourselves, have you taken a look at the balloon mapping tool page? http://publiclaboratory.org/tool/balloon-mapping. Once you have the basics of the kit together (materials, guides, process detailed on this page), this listserve is a great resource for question answering and problem solving. We also sell a balloon kit if you are not interested in getting the pieces together yourself: http://shop.breadpig.com/collections/publiclaboratory/products/balloon-mapping-kit.

There is also a person that I worked with during the BP oil spill on aerial mapping that is currently a PhD student at Goldsmiths and has taught a couple of balloon mapping workshops there, I'll email you off list with his contact information. Additionally, I've been working with the University College London ExCiteS project who will be utilizing balloon mapping in some of the work that they are doing in London (http://publiclaboratory.org/place/mildmay). These just might be some good local London based contacts for you to have as your project progresses.

Best, Shannon

-- 
Shannon Dosemagen
Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science
publiclaboratory.org

@PublicLab

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