Robert, Tom, and I just arrived out at Camp Roberts up in rural central California, about 4.5 hours north of Los Angeles. We are kicking off a three day data collection simulation at McMillian Airfield. We were asked to participate in the exercise to see how our open source tools can act as a glue layer by aggregating real time data from the field into a rich data browser, so teams back at the base can get a comprehensive picture of what is happening. When we arrived, a group from Berkley was on the strip flying their drones.

Specifically, we are going to be testing our rapid map tile generation tools and integration with our new open layers stack, deploying our SMS monitoring system (light GMS modem/python system) for both receiving data from the field and sending alerts, and using our aggregation tools to parse and map drone data - like pinpointing aerial photos from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Here is a close up of some of the UAVs on base, but we are probably going to be pulling data from lighter UAVs that are more affordable to NGOs - in the sub $10,000 range.

These exercises at Camp Robert’s are organized by STAR-TIDES, Dr. Lin Well’s coordination project to better serve stressed populations in post-disaster environments. The exercise is a balance between more script-based tests of equipment and agile code sprints, where objectives for a given day flow from beginning-of-day needs to coding to live exercises. John Crowley, who is leading the exercise, has pulled an exciting team together. Google has three people here and some serious hardware, Mikel Maron from OpenStreetMap is here running mapping parties, Michal Migurski, the developer of Walking Papers and the CTO at Stamen Design is here, InSTEDD has two people running their geoChat service, and Sahana also has a team of three people here. Patrick Meier, who has been working on participatory mapping, will be arriving later in the week.  

Tuesday afternoon focused on establishing a forward operating base.

Here is a look out from the operations base back to the airfield where all the coding is happening.

Today (Wednesday) is going to be an interop day. We are supposed to focus on networking, collecting data, mapping data, analyzing data, and sharing data back out with the goal of creating an interoperable data flow between the different groups. Our work is to cross the boundaries of these different experiments and aggregate data. Drupal’s aggregation tools are going to be a big win here as we plan on sucking in a lot of KML from the different groups. There are also plans to set up local mapping servers. Google is already working on processing a custom set of data from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and Mikel came with a locally running OSM server.

We will post tomorrow on our progress.