Tomnod – the online search party looking for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370

Thirteen countries, 57 ships and 48 aircraft are currently looking for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which has been missing since last Friday.

But since a few hours after the plane and its 239 passengers disappeared, the search has been joined by some 2.3 million ordinary internet users, who are using the Tomnod website to scan more than 24,000 sq km of satellite imagery to help locate the missing aircraft.

Tomnod is run by commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe, which soon after the plane’s disappearance repositioned two of its five satellites over its last known location in the Gulf of Thailand, and have since moved them as the search headed west.

Tomnod users are provided with a randomly chosen map from the search area and are told to drop a pin if they see signs of aeroplane wreckage, life rafts, oil slicks or anything that looks “suspicious”.

An algorithm then finds where there is overlap in tags from people who tagged the same location, and the most notable areas are shared with authorities. A Tomnod spokesperson said that as of Thursday every pixel had been looked at by human eyes at least 30 times.

Despite the huge online search party, the Tomnod hunt has so far have proved inconclusive. But that – and the fact crowdsourcing was disastrously discredited during the hunt for the Boston bombers and the search for adventurer Steve Fossett’s single-engine plane – hasn’t stopped millions of people searching the maps and tagging over 745,000 images they believe may be signs of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane.

Numerous Facebook groups have been set up with members from around the world posting and discussing screenshots of satellite imagery around the clock.

Here we speak to three members of Tomnod’s search party and ask why they’ve giving up their time to scour tens of thousands of kilometres of satellite imagery for free.

Mandy Paine, tax accountant, Western Australia

Why are you continuing to search for the plane seven days after its disappearance?

I guess like everyone else I think the whole thing is a mystery, given that no one seems to have any idea where the plane is or what happened. Like so many people I feel so concerned about what has happened and really wish that even if they cannot immediately figure out what went wrong at least they can find the plane so the families of those involved can start the healing process.

Having spent some time on the site, I found it difficult to know when to tag something. How do you know when to mark something as suspicious?

I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for as the plane can be in one piece or thousands of pieces. I think one thing that would make the searching a little bit easier would be examples of what waves look like and wave formations as sometimes these can look like possible debris.

I’ve found many things: oil rigs, powered boats, fishing trawlers, a couple of helicopters and a whole heap of things that I have tagged but have no idea what they are.

What I look for are items that are irregular in shape and colour when compared to the rest of the area and areas where there are lots of bright white shiny-looking things. The plane’s fuselage is predominately white, which helps.

I’ve now worked out what boats, trawlers, naval ships, helicopters, oil rigs and even whales may look like. If it’s none of the above and I can’t figure it out, I tag it or post it to the group and see what other people think.

How hopeful do you feel that you and other Tomnod users might find the plane?

I would like to think that some of things I have tagged can lead to them finding the plane; it has to be somewhere. It is a needle in a massive haystack.

There’s a lot of camaraderie between users on the MH370 Searching in Tomnod Facebook group; everyone is very supportive of each other, and all, so far, have a common goal with no one person trying to be the one who solves the mystery.

I like the idea of everyone looking and tagging the same maps. None of us are air crash investigators or trained in reading satellite images, so getting a group of people to look for things has a greater chance of finding an answer to the mystery.

There are many conspiracy theories across the sites but there is also an underlying feeling of hope, or wishful thinking, that the plane will be found intact somewhere and everyone will be safe. To be honest I’m very distrustful of the way the official investigation is being handled and all the conflicting information. I have a feeling if the plane is in the ocean there is a good chance it will be found by us.

Mike Seberger, project manager, United States

Your screenshot of a “jet-shaped object” went viral on Tuesday, but was later confirmed to be the image of a boat. Why are you continuing to search for the plane?

Initially I felt really excited because my image so closely resembled the scale and shape of a 777-200, and it was in that excited mindset that I wrote the CNN iReport hoping to get someone to examine it. I even had people claiming to be aerospace engineers email me overlays supporting the photo being a match for the plane. But after cooling down a bit, and thinking it through more logically, it makes more sense for it to be a boat, unless my satellite image was captured while the plane was floating, which seems unlikely given the time-stamp on my image, or submerged in very shallow water, but that also seems unlikely.

People just want to help, are intrigued by the mystery and the technology makes it easy for someone local or across the world to pitch into that effort. Honestly, I’ve only been able to spend a couple of hours in total on Tomnod, because I have other commitments, and most often when I visit, the site is apparently overloaded with traffic, as pages won’t load or function properly. In a way, I view that as a good thing, because that means lots of others are probably in there working to review images, even if I can’t access them.

As the news reports have changed the story a number of times, I’ve seen a lot of comments from Tomnod users saying that they’re searching in the wrong area. I think people definitely want to feel like they’re doing something productive by searching in the right area and the only way to do this is to hack the URL so that you can obtain a latitude and longitude for your map, but that turns it into a tedious process.

Given the huge amount of information out there, do you still feel hopeful you might find something?

With each day that passes, I think some margin of hope also disappears. There are a lot of interesting photos out there, but with almost every one of them, you could talk yourself into it being a plane, or piece of a plane, or a whale, or a boat, whatever you set out to convince yourself it looks like, there would be visual attributes to support or conflict. What seems evident at this point that the plane and people are gone, though the specific location, cause, and other circumstances are still very mysterious. In that sense, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and I truly hope they get some closure soon and if I or the Tomnod user community at large can help in that closure, that’s great.

Anja Meilonen, Belgium

Why did you decide to get involved and how do you feel about giving up your time for free?

I’ve been searching on Tomnod for a couple of years. I’ve helped to map Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, searched for a missing plane in Arkansas, and a lost boat at sea in New Zealand.

I think it’s great that satellite images are provided for free and I don’t mind not being paid to offer some of my free time for a good cause! I started searching on 10 March and spend at least two to three hours every time I start searching.

I started looking for the plane as soon as I received Tomnod’s email alert on 10 March and spent quite some hours on it already. I really hope the plane will be found, so relatives of the missing people can get answers. It must be horrible to have someone you love and care for on the plane and not knowing what happened.

How do you feel about so many untrained people being involved?

It’s heartwarming to see how many strangers are involved working together sharing their finds and asking each other for advice.

Tomnod makes it very clear at the beginning of your search what kind of object to look for and you can look at them any time throughout the search to compare, so you don’t tag every wave you spot instead of wreckage, oil slicks or life rafts.

I realise that we are probably not looking for a complete plane but for wreckage, debris and hopefully life rafts full of living people. Everyone can do it, it isn’t difficult, it is just a bit intensive as you have to concentrate and watch every inch of the image. Each image covers around 200 square meters so a lot of things show up rather small, depending on the size of the screen you use. This is why not everyone can look for hours in a row; you lose concentration after a while and then it is time to take a small break and start searching again after you gave your eyes and brain a bit of rest.

You haven’t found anything convincing so far; when will you stop searching?

It feels good to feel you can help a bit when a disaster strikes, from your comfortable chair at home, no matter where you live on this globe. It’s much better than not be able to do anything to help. It also makes you humble and question yourself about how it must be to live through disasters and be grateful for the life you have, the things you’re spared from. I won’t stop searching as long as new images are provided and the plane isn’t found.

When the plane is found, I’ll return to the mapping of the typhoon damage in my spare time. I think the Tomnod crowdsourced projects are one of the most awesome sites around the web.

There is always hope and only hope left in a lot of circumstances.