The volunteer search for Jim Gray, lost at sea in 2007, highlights the challenges of computer-aided emergency response

摘要

On sunday january 28,2007,noted computer scientist Jim Gray disappeared at sea in his sloop Tenacious.He was swailing singlehanded,with plans to scatter his mother's ashes near the Farallon Islands, some 27 miles outside San Francisco's Golden Gate. As new of gray's disappearance spread through his social network, his friends and colleagues began discussing ways to mobilize their skills and resources to help authorities locate Tenacious and rescue Gray. That discussion evolved over days and weeks into an unprecedented civilian search-and-rescue (SAR~a) exercise involving satellites, private planes, automated image analysis, ocean current simulations, and crowdsourced human computing, in collaboration with the U.S. Coast Guard. The team that emerged included computer scientists, engineers, graduate students, oceanographers, astronomers, busi- ness leaders, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs, many of whom had never met one another before. There was ample access to funds, technol-