Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide

Open source is getting everywhere, from beer to cola to datasets.

Open data is undeniably a good thing. One of the goals of Open_Sailing is to make data about the ocean more openly available, navigable, and useable. Who knows what will become of this data, once it's been set loose into the world? We can add to open-source data initiatives like the Argo project, Clear Climate Code, EdGCM, and open-source design initiatives such as Architecture for Humanity, Open Architecture Initiative, Appropedia, Instructables and more. Anybody can use Open_Sailing's design, technology and data for anything.

Yay, open data!

At the moment we are working with PachBox, a passive monitoring system that will allow us to broadcast data from the middle of any ocean. In the future we'd like to expand this to include other useful data, such as marine life levels, salinity, etc. Any ideas or thoughts on ways to do this would be appreciated!

how many antennas in the sea...

I was just having fun trying to calculate how many antennas we would need to create an ocean data mesh network.


Argo floats


Mesh network with diversified nodes

>>>
If I would like to create a global ocean data mesh network, I would like to :
- determine the best long distance data intensive communication technology we should use.
- the energy necessary to each floating antenna-relay.
- calculate the number of floating objects required
- determine roughly the cost of such a technology to be implemented.

I will do the calculation on what I could find on the internet, as a very rough sketch of calculation.
For the example, the antenna I found for WIFI long range are 80km in range (radius), and cost say 3000£, just as example.

To cover up an area of 1000 km2, I need to set up a grid of 25 x 25 80km long range WIFI antennas in the seas.
The antennas signal need to overlap, so I can only exploit a 40km radius (this is why I dont have 12.5 antennas for 1000 km long square).
So I need 25x25, 625 floating antennas to cover up 1000km2 of sea.
So the ratio of antenna needed on 1m2 is 1/1600.

The ocean is ~3.61 x 10E14 m2 (361'000'000'000'000m2)
So to cover the oceans with antennas I will need
~3.61 X 10E14 m2 / 1600 = 225'625'000'000 antennas

Let's say that each antenna is 3000£.
225'625'000'000 x 3000 = 676'875'000'000'000£

We were 6,692,030,277 humans in 2008.
676'875'000'000'000 / 6,692,030,277 = 101'146.43£ / per person to cover the ocean with antennas.

This is too expensive, the environmental impact negatively huge. I blame it on :
- the idea, perhaps a stupid idea, perhaps not.
- the technology efficiency
- the cost of technology
- the lack of money in the world

So my question is : What is the technology that would enable the world population to have an entirely free ocean wireless data mesh network? At what price? How?
It is a technology question at this point.

So anyone : just an advice, of which technology to look into for long distance wireless mesh network would be amazing.
If you know someone who could answer this question I would be very happy to know about.
Please add in the comments below, or send me an email cesar.harada@opensailing.net

Concept and world map

download pdf (7.6mb) / see .jpg (1.4mb)

This is our official 9 folds A1 format, 2012hopes.com + international-ocean-station.org threat nd concept map, beta 01.
It is creative commons It combines :
- high human density
- responsivness to pandemics
- recent violent conflicts
- maritime piracy
- hypothetical nuclear fallouts (from civilian power plants, based on the footprint of Chernobyl)
- high sea pollution
- sea level rise endangered land
- pole shift hypothesis location
- tsunami risk exposure
- earthquakes
- cold sea
- cold land
- intense sea wind
- low biomass, low chlorophyll
- a grayscale composite of all these maps



download pdf (11.6mb) / see .jpg (2.6mb)

You can download both maps in both .pdf and .jpg in a .zip file (21mb).

This concept map explains how we researched originally about 2012 and how the project transformed into a sea steading project.

These 2 maps will answer :
- where on earth are we less exposed to threats.
- what we are interested in, and where our research is going.

Following is the text on the map :
Open Sailing
The best way to predict our future is to invent it.

Open Sailing aims to design and invent future lifestyles to overcome any possible natural and manmade disasters stimulating people's ingenuity and sense of solidarity. Might it be global warming or energy conflicts, we are living in a time where we are sniffing the 'Apocalypse', finally realising our human part of responsibility as the earth is crumbling. 2012 is a year when a collection of apocalyptic events are rumored to happen. We are taking 2012 as an ideal dystopic symbol we design for. 2012 is tomorrow, we must design quickly using these constraints and invent bootstrapping DIY technologies.

Open Sailing method is to convert apocalyptic threats into design constraints. From our compiled set of threat maps, we found that oceans are the safest locations. Ocean survival architecture became our new starting point, but we need to go further than surviving : how can we live together in this new fluid configuration and remain a hyper-connected intelligent social being? We are trying to make a truly "open architecture" : pre-broken, under-defined, reconfigurable, moveable, pluggable, organic, fluid. Can we reach a harmonious dynamic state of interdependence with each other and the earth? Is this the next step of civilization progress? Will we dissociate our concept of progress with infrastructure and metropolis?

NEXT STEPS IN 2009
Finding motivated knowledgeable collaborators and funders (february).
Prototyping technology equipment for ocean living, UK (march ~ april).
Testing the Open Sailing in the Atlantic ocean, Morocco (may).
Public presentation of Open Sailing researches (june)

These maps were made by Martin Gautron, Cesar Harada and Hiromi Ozaki.



The map folded, coming out of my pocket,




the map on the world map side (on the other side, it is the concept map).
If you want to have a map just send us an email, we’ll arrange.

Visualizing Ocean Data

Interesting images and articles from New Scientist Visions of Data



Whale shark pose

New compact and rugged gadgets can be attached to marine animals. They record pressure, temperature, acceleration and other information, helping biologists to study them in new detail.

But they also require new ways of presenting data.

Researchers at Swansea University, UK, are trying to make it easier to understand the data from accelerometers on tagged animals, which record motion like a Wii videogame controller.

This 3D plot shows the orientation of an animal's body in the water over time, in this case for a whale shark.

(Image: Swansea University)



Penguin vs cormorant

The body orientation plots (left) of penguins and cormorants are similar - but adding the data from depth sensors reveals their behaviour to be very different.

The penguin ascends the water column gradually, spending a lot of time at intermediate depths (green colours).

By contrast, the cormorant ascends almost vertically, levelling off only occasionally to equalise pressure and avoid getting the bends.

(Image: Swansea University)