Adopt A Beach

[Heather Blanchard]

Greetings everyone,

We would like to see if we can get some momentum going with Adopt-A-
Beach. We have imagery all we need now thanks to the great folks at
SDSU. Now we need a user friendly, OpenStreetMap kind of system where
people can use their browser to inspect a beach, marshlands, estuaries
along the Gulf Coast from high-resolution aerial imagery. All from the
comfort of their house. Very similar to what folks did for
OpenStreetMap to create the first basemap of Port au Prince in Haiti.
Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co9LIxB3PVQ

Dr. Frost at San Diego State University is leading this effort and
could use some GIS and developers help on this. Are there people
interest in helping? Jeffery do you think we can work with you as
well?

Please reply back to the group if you are interest in helping in that
project so Dr. Frost can get int touch.

Matt - this would be a great project for the Rails community. Jeff -
would you have some ideas here. We know you did great work in Albania
and are looking to apply lessons learned with the Gulf Coast.

Chris - Meet Matt, he is in the Tampa area too. Perhaps you guys can
get together when Chris gets back from Louisiana.

All - if you are interested in Gulf Coast efforts with the Commons,
please join the Oil Reporter Google Group. We are happy to cross post
as topics present.

Heather
Mobile + 1 703 593 3823
Skype ID: poplifegirl

[Chris Bennett]

Thanks for the e-mail, Heather.

Leaving St. Charles Parish right now for Grand Isle where we're going to start testing a new a nearshore vacuuming process. For a quick introduction to all, I am behind http://www.onestorm.org/ and http://www.govlive.com/ - where my partner in GovLive is the president US Flood Control, BP's contractor for Tiger Dams "land boom" ...the orange tubes you see all over the news. I'm here helping out however I can. Check out http://www.usfloodcontrol.com/ for more (social media icons at top).

One way I may be helpful to this group is that I hold a treasured BP/JIC badge that gets me onto any beach or base. Let me tell you, there are police EVERYWHERE, not letting anyone near these beaches and bases. BP is tightly controlling the operation, which is making it very difficult for outsiders to help. However, they've been awesome to us and are really great to work with.

The challenge with public oil reporting and mapping systems is and will likely continue to be that an oiled beach immediately becomes a hazmat situation where the prepositioned contractor for the parish/county/city moves in, ropes off the area, and doesn't let anyone near it. Miami-Dade county just announced that they're not interested in volunteers for example. Volunteer opportunities will come in time I'm sure, and access will probably be more open if/when we're talking about smaller dispersed amounts of oil over hundreds of miles.

Matt, I'll email you when I'm back in the Tampa area. Should be Monday for a few days, then back to Louisiana.

Chris

Mobile: (727)697-7526