Wilderness Search & Rescue and GIScience

Abstract

Wilderness search and rescue problems are inherently spatial and undoubtedly raise meaningful GIScience questions. The process of searching for and rescuing people in distress provides an appealing spatial problem for geographers to support and for testing theoretical developments in the real-world. Essentially, the fundamental goals of SAR are to locate persons in need, care for them, and extract them from dangerous situations as quickly and safely as possible. If we apply GISystems to these unique spatial problems, then search and rescue personnel, their victims, geographers, and GIScientists will all benefit from our work. In this session we anticipate original research and/or discussions related to Applied GIS, Geocoding/Georeferencing, Spatiotemporal Analysis, Time Geography, Spatial Statistics, and Qualitative Geography.