NRGS Geospatial Blog

I’ve always been fascinated with Search and Rescue. To me as a GIS person it’s almost a perfect application of Spatial Analysis, data collection, and project management. I say that and I’ve never been involved in a Search and Rescue effort.  I’ve thought about it – but I haven’t dove into an actual event to help.

When Steve Fosset disappeared a few years back I participated in the Amazon Turk search. With this search you were given an area to visually search. The area was broken into tiles and if you found something you clicked a  button and that tile was passed back to the main group. To me the Turk exercise was both tremendously efficient and a tremendous waste of time.  If you’re going to search a large amount of imagery it was brilliant – but it seemed to me the search could have been refined more. But I wasn’t on the decision making end of things – I’m almost positive I would have a completely different opinion if I were on the other side of things.  People do the best they can with what they  are given – especially if time is limited which it almost always is during these situations.

It was with great interest I read about N2700Q (click the link – well worth the read). This was a plane that disappeared with two persons back in 2006 near Sedona Arizona. The plane dropped off the face of the earth.  Having someone just disappear like that has to be tough – I’ve never had a family member just up and disappear.  A group called MAST (Missing Aircraft Search Team) was formed after the Stever Fosset disappearance. They were contacted and started a search using Google Earth,  Interviews with possibel witnesses,  and any data they could lay their hands on. They took this data and  developed scenarios that would lead to the location of the plan. The first scenario led them to the plane wreckage.  To me the interesting part of this interview is the following quote on searching: “The data are so scattered,” he said. “We found in both cases [Fossett's disappearance and the 182 case] that there were myriad problems with coordination, funding, insurance, standards, routine destruction of vital search data, search command and control, and lack of ‘lessons learned’ analysis.” . The three things that stick out are Coordination, Vital Search Data, and essentially what I would call a Project Closure meeting (Lessons Learned).  You always have a problem with Data – Coordination can just about kill you – and once everyone gets done and stomps off you never get a chance to get everyone on the same page. With all the expertise that any Search and rescue Group puts on the ground – I wonder if there is a GIS person involved….or if they would want one involved.  We aren’t known for speed…at times.

Anyway – something interesting for a Saturday.  Good Job MAST.

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Randal Hale Google, Spatial Analyst, imagery Google, imagery, Spatial Analysis