There are crowd-sourcing sites like zooniverse.org which really do help with problems that computers still aren't very good at such as image recognition (mapping solar flares, deforestation, ocean floor analysis). They can simply rely on lots of amateurs pre-ranking images for expert analysis, which helps in putting those needles you're looking for into a much smaller haystack.
Yes, there are plenty of ludicrous premises - real time refugee monitoring of the high seas isn't a clever one. But there are plenty of actually useful applications for this sort of technology.