Operational Use of Mapping Tools in Missing Person Searches

GIS underlies today’s wilderness search operations in several ways. For the search management team, GIS-powered applications such as SARTopo allow us to integrate current search efforts via searchers’ smartphones in a common map showing search teams, assigned areas, and lost-person behavior statistics via tools like range rings, which display how far from the initial planning point (IPP) given percentiles of subjects similar to our current subject have been found. For the individual team leader/dog handler searching an assigned task area, these tools, via smartphones or bespoke GPS units paired with smartphone apps, can integrate current search tracks/waypoints in a way that aids in tactical decisions. Finally, our team has used recorded tracks and waypoints to glean hit and miss distances to measure the effective sweep width for a given detector in given weather, season, and other factors. Through a series of peer-reviewed reports, we’ve helped fill a national database of sweep widths and gleaned practical hints on how to apply these data usefully. We’ve also hypothesis-tested the prevailing models relating sweep width to objective probabilities of detection for practical search tasks. I’ll be reviewing these three major applications.