{"id":71122,"date":"2016-06-02T09:11:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T09:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=6e9575c8ea6eaa779b8aa573a7354792"},"modified":"2016-06-02T09:11:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T09:11:13","slug":"press-release-supporting-volunteers-week-with-a-boatload-of-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=71122","title":{"rendered":"Press release: Supporting Volunteers\u2019 Week with a boatload of data"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Volunteers\u2019 Week is an annual celebration of the fantastic contribution that millions of volunteers are making across the UK. This year it is taking place from 1 \u2013 12 June.<\/p>\n

Staff at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl<\/abbr>) can take up to 3 days\u2019 a year special paid leave for volunteering.<\/p>\n

Rich Brantingham works in Dstl<\/abbr>\u2019s Cyber and Information Services division, and takes advantage of this opportunity by putting his skills to use with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI<\/abbr>) \u2013 the charity that saves lives at sea.<\/p>\n

He said:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019d have liked to have been a boat crew volunteer, but I\u2019m too far from a station. So instead I\u2019ve become a \u2018non-traditional volunteer\u2019 \u2013 a breed I\u2019m hoping will grow as the RNLI<\/abbr> taps into skills and experience that could help it achieve its purpose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Earlier this year, Rich was at the RNLI<\/abbr>\u2019s Innovation Showcase, which aimed to stimulate innovation across the organisation. There were a number of stands showcasing work done by RNLI<\/abbr> teams, from new fundraising initiatives to improvements to rescue vessel steering systems.<\/p>\n

At the event, Rich presented some of the work he\u2019d been doing to make best use of Automatic Identification System (AIS<\/abbr>) data from RNLI<\/abbr> vessels. AIS<\/abbr> is an automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services for identifying and locating vessels. AIS<\/abbr> involves electronically exchanging data with other nearby ships, AIS<\/abbr> base stations, and satellites. Back in spring 2015, Rich was given two areas of work by the RNLI<\/abbr>: providing open access to AIS<\/abbr> data with the aim of making better use of data throughout the organisation and stimulating further innovation; and producing visualisations of historic data to show the length of coastline the RNLI<\/abbr> covers.<\/p>\n

He secured four years of AIS<\/abbr> data \u2013 1.5 million data points \u2013 for \u2018free-to-a-good-cause\u2019 from a commercial provider that he databased on Amazon Web Services. By the time of the Innovation Showcase event, Rich had generated density images of RNLI<\/abbr> AIS<\/abbr> points for the UK and more detailed images for areas on the south coast.<\/p>\n

Rich said:<\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s loads of things we can do with the track data to raise public awareness and inform business decisions. The approach I\u2019ve taken means all the data for a vastly distributed fleet is stored and can be queried in a single location. This means images and information can be much more easily extracted and used by RNLI<\/abbr> staff, for example, in their awareness campaigns. I\u2019ve now made recommendations to the RNLI<\/abbr> about how we can take the work forward with a key theme being \u2018open data to stimulate innovation\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\nDstl<\/abbr> Media Enquiries<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

\n Email<\/span>
\n press@dstl.gov.uk<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Media enquiries<\/span>
\n 01980 658666\n <\/p>\n

\n Out of hours<\/span>
\n 07901 892660\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celebrating the work of a volunteer at Dstl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}