Grassroots mapping

A couple of days ago, we went with the folks of LA Bucket Brigade (again!) to do some grassroots mapping in the Bay Jimmy & Wilkinson Bayou (29.45193, -89.89812), and it was superb ~ and dystopic :/

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Seen from up there is so different from what you see from the ground :

We went in those super cool (noisy though) boats :

Boat seen from the balloon (!!!) :

I took a chance to try to enhance the "photography cabin" with Sue Stoessel, Bennie Gregory and Hunter Daniel (in a previous mapping trip though): 
 
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I'm in love with this technique Gonzo Earth and Grassrootsmapping keep on improving, also because I really need it to assess the efficiency of the oil spill collecting robot I am working on : protei.org. Here we were testing the long tail, to see how well we can sail upwind with a long tail : 

that's the robot I am prototyping this week : 

If you want to help on the making of the protei robot, or do some aerial photography of the oil spill, get involved at LA Bucket Brigade, contact Shannon Dosemagen <shannon@labucketbrigade.org>, or Hunter Daniel <hunterdaniel@gmail.com> 901-550-7667 directly by phone to arrange a trip in the sun :)

Posted via email from cesarharada.com/blog

TEDxBoston : the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

This is NOT an Official TED video, it is simply an archive of the TEDxBoston Adventure.

What academic light can two Boston College professors shed on the nation’s largest environmental disaster?
What lessons for oil extraction, transport, crisis prevention, and response can be drawn from this present calamity? Meanwhile, can a 2010 TED Fellow on the frontline in the Gulf contribute to the design of autonomous robots that collect oil?
Join Boston College Professors Noah Snyder of the Geology and Geophysics department and Zygmunt Plater of the Law School for an interactive briefing on the situation in the Gulf. Professor Snyder is the Director of BC's interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program. Professor Plater served on the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission during the Exxon Valdez crisis; he has been involved with Alaskan efforts to assist Gulf communities in the aftermath of the BP Gulf blowout and attempts to draw systemic lessons for the future from the Exxon Valdez and the BP blowout. We also will be joined via Skype by Cesar Harada, a former MIT researcher in New Orleans. Ask critical questions about environmental science and law, as well as some of Harada’s other ambitions, from creating the International Ocean Station as an open-source architecture project to crowdsourcing environmental data on the web.

Thanks to John Werner and Grier Tumas. 

Devlin Hall, Room 201, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467

DATE: Thursday, July 22nd, late morning

TEDxBoston : http://tedxboston.org/
John Werner : http://www.citizenschools.org
Zygmunt Plater : http://bc.edu/schools/law/fac-staff/deans-faculty/platerz.html
Noah Snyder : http://www2.bc.edu/~snyderno/
Shannon Dosemagem : http://labucketbrigade.org/
Cesar Harada : http://cesarharada.com/
Oil collecting Robot : http://protei.org

Posted via email from cesarharada.com/blog