Using GIS in Search and Rescue

Having been involved in ground search and rescue professionally and as a volunteer for years and working with GIS for a day job, it has always made sense to utlilize GIS for search and rescue information management and analysis.

There is some exciting momentum afoot in the last year or so that may be of interest to GIS practicioners in Manitoba in this regard.

First an active volunteer search and rescue association for the province has been formed (http://www.searchandrescuevolunteer.ca SARMAN) and has the critical mass to build strong search and rescue teams across the province. Geomatics skills are highly valued assets in GSAR (ground search and rescue) and USAR (urban search and rescue), not to mention air search (CASARA). While traditionally search and rescue has been conducted by police forces and fire departments, this new volunteer association allows membership from a broader pool of disciplines. I recommend taking the basic GSAR training to see if this type of activity is something you would be interested in.

Secondly, there is a growing international recognition of the value of GIS and geomatics tools in conducting and managing search and rescue operations across North America. As a result there are more free GIS tools available designed to assist volunteers and spatially aware mobile applications that allow for the rapid collection of georeferenced information and clues critcial for efficient search management. There are active user groups now in the US and Canada working on applications and ESRI is now involved as well.

• Here is the ArcUser Yosemite SAR link and Don Ferguson’s paper  
• See this link for the GSTOP – you could print out this manual for reference, it is the US standard for Incident Management GIS (they are updating it as we speak).
• Here is the SARGIS Google Group
• There are a few training opportunities coming up in the US (see the above Google Group)
• There is an ArcGIS Explorer Desktop component of MapSAR coming soon as well, this will a hasty tool.
• ArcGIS Explorer Online has briefing capabilities. This is cool stuff, as you can set up different map views and use them in a presentation mode.  Check it out!

Anyway, that's a bit to get you started but maybe, I'm the one catching up. Anyone working in this field already and have more information to share?