Search & Find MH370

Miri, Sarawak | Invent Your Own Challenge

Search and Find Missing Airplane MH370 -- Using Satellite Data

High-Level Project Summary

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 had lost contact and missing on 8th of March, 2014 at Indian Ocean. Until now, the final accident location is not identified. Where is 239 souls in the plane now ? It is most big concern in aviation world. We aimed to identify the accident place and develop the app or search manually like ;Method 1. Develop an mobile application that performs compare airplane parts and debris image on the surface of the ocean by satellite data.Method 2. Search the "Not yet found" missing parts of the plane at coastal of Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Antarctica. Method 3. Re-trace the already identified debris' floating location day by day using satellite data.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/qChxrgd-mRw

Link to Final Project

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1B9bWi5KnP-1bpCpY4Axzm3n0gktGq7tereEjpp85Vv8/edit?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

On March 8, 2014, Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 bound to Beijing departed at Kuala Lumpur International Airport with 239 passengers and crew, however the plane turned around left and toward the Indian Ocean. Then disappeared from the RADAR screen.

Many countries have conducted search operations from the sky and sea. Thousands of volunteers search the satellite picture, however until now, the last position of the plane is not identified. Where are the 239 souls in the plane now ?

Our team aims to search and find the point of accident. Because it is a big concern of people in the world and the aviation industry. Our team is International people from Japan, India, Bangladesh and Malaysia.

The mobile application we developed works on smartphones. Users browse and search the satellite map then if the user finds some suspicious shape image on the screen, tap the material image.

The application compares the suspected debris image and airplane's parts data.

And display the result with a percentage of similarity.

About this application, we think the social impact for the world is extremely big. If we can find the final disappearance point of the plane by gathering much more debris data, through this application, finally the airplane will be found. Then, if the flight recorder was recovered, one of the most wonder mystery in the world shall be solved.

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Space Agency Data

All free derived satellite data from NASA, ESA, JAXA have not enough resolution for our project. Therefore we used only Google map and Bing map for our app. Sorry.

Hackathon Journey

We planned three methods to perform this project. Most difficult obstacle was resolution of satellite images. For identify the floating airplane debris (for example sized 2 meters x 5 meters), we need 50cm class high resolution daily data. We tried to Sentinel, ALOS, Landsat however, the resolution we can download or browse is like 50m, 100m, or 500m data like a mosaic pictures. We asked mentors, organizers, ambassadors, and most of them said it costs money an time. So, we have learned the limitation of free data and also that many space venture companies are providing high resolution satellite data. Then motivated we shall do our own venture in the future.

I should say much thanks to Dr. Shinichi Sobue with JAXA, Mr. Hirokazu Mori, Japanese astronaut candidate to be, Mr. Robert, NASA ambassador, Mr. Kalvin, Sarawak mentor and Mr. Teo Yuang Teck, Sarawak event director.