Type of site | crowdsourcing platform / web application[1] |
---|---|
Owner | DigitalGlobe |
URL | tomnod.com |
Commercial | No |
Registration | Yes |
Current status | Retired |
Tomnod was a project owned by Colorado-based satellite company DigitalGlobe that used crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images. It was announced Tomnod was no longer using crowdsourcing of images as of 1 August 2019.[2]
Originally a research project of the University of California, San Diego in 2010,[3] Tomnod (Mongolian for "big eye")[4] was founded by Shay Har-Noy, Luke Barrington, Nate Ricklin and Albert Yu Min Lin.[5][6] Three years later, Tomnod was acquired by the company DigitalGlobe while incubating at EvoNexus.[7] Tomnod used online map interfaces that engage many people to each view and tag a small section of a large area on the planet. In 2011 Tomnod cooperated with the UNHCR to locate refugee camps in Somalia.[8] Users were asked to use satellite images to count the shelters of refugees. Other projects include searching for the tomb of Genghis Khan,[9] mapping damage after Typhoon Haiyan,[4] and searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.[10]
Starting in March 2014 Tomnod took images gathered by DigitalGlobe satellites and offered them to the public for viewing and identification in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.[11] Over 8 million people used the site to look for signs of wreckage, oil spills and other objects of interest.[11] Prior to this search effort Tomnod had 10,000 contributors for other projects on the site.[12] Users could tag images which are later reviewed with algorithms.[6][13] The site was down on 11 and 12 March due to high traffic (100,000 visits per minute).[8] It was reported that over 650,000 "objects of interest" had been tagged by users on Tomnod and that their maps had been viewed over 98 million times.[6] Originally Tomnod had included 24,000 km2 of satellite imagery for users to search.[11] Later they included maps of 14,000 km2 of the Straits of Malacca and the Indian Ocean as new information was released.[14]