Search And Rescue System Research Articles

Urban and social resilience—the role of cities and civil society organizations in the Search and Rescue system in the Mediterranean

Search and Rescue (SAR) in the Central Mediterranean has been at the center of the European debate on migration management of the past decade. In response to the challenges posed by maritime rescue operations, European governments have increasingly centralized their efforts through Frontex operations, departing from the previous collaborative framework with SAR NGOs that was established in the aftermath of the Lampedusa shipwreck. The political discourse has predominantly focused on the designation and definition of a Port of Safety, sidelining the imperative need for an effective SAR infrastructure, leading to life-threatening impasses at sea, and also leading to the complete disregard for the agency and will of cities. While the cooperation between governments, cities, and civil society organizations has been at the center of successful decentralized migration management efforts on land, a contrasting trend of centralization and diminished cooperation has emerged at sea in the Central Mediterranean. The article argues that the European Union’s shift from SAR-oriented efforts to border management has resulted in heightened inefficiencies within the Mediterranean SAR infrastructure. This inefficiency is attributed to the diminished collaboration with NGOs and local entities. Utilizing the category of resilience as a theoretical framework of migration management, the article will address the role of cities and NGOs in the creation of a coordinated SAR system in the Mediterranean.

The impact of interorganizational collaboration on the viability of disaster response operations: The Gjerdrum landslide in Norway

This study investigates the interorganizational collaboration among agencies that responded to a landslide in Gjerdrum, Norway in 2020. It focuses on the crucial role of communication, coordination, cooperation, and knowledge sharing within organizations, and it examines tensions between centralization and decentralization, professional and administrative leadership, planning and improvisation, and external and internal information sharing. To explore this collaboration, we conducted nine interviews and employed the viable system model (VSM) as a conceptual and methodological framework. Through a systemic diagnosis of the search and rescue (SAR) crisis response system’s viability and by applying the VSM, the structural, communicational, and functional pathologies in interorganizational collaboration were identified. Thus, this diagnostic approach allowed us to determine the pathological features that challenged the SAR system’s effectiveness and viability, including imbalances, inefficiencies in maintaining internal and external interactions, communication breakdowns, and inefficient resource allocation. These insights clarify the structural challenges within the SAR system and underscore the significance of optimizing interconnections, establishing efficient decision-making processes, and improving communication flows to enhance the overall effectiveness of the SAR system.

Optimization to IAMSAR Search Theory and Implementation on Search & Rescue Planning Decision Support Software

The activity connected to Search and Rescue (SAR) operation at sea is a rather complex, demanding activity, with consequent use of resources, very long times and high costs. The search theory applied to sea SAR operations covered in the IMO IAMSAR Manual Volume II and implemented on artificial intelligence software significantly reduces the complexity and difficulty of the search related SAR planning phase, providing the tools necessary for optimal planning, which allow you to optimize the search effort, maximize the result of the successes obtained, reduce the time for locating the survivors, which are reflected in the increase in the number of lives saved, and, moreover, in the reduction costs in terms of use of SAR resources and above all on the risk and stress of SAR crews who are generally exposed for very long times to a hostile environment. This work illustrates an innovative mathematical model that integrates the IAMSAR theory in order to further improve the optimization of the search effort and it is performed on open source software that allows to considerably reducing the costs of the hardware and software technology with an increase in the efficiency of the SAR system.

How well do we search for missing people in Queensland, Australia?

Most countries, states or counties have an organised Search and Rescue (SAR) response to reported missing people, whether it is by statutory authorities such as the police or by volunteer groups. The success or otherwise of the ensuing searches is often dependent on the training of the coordination team and the adherence to known and proven search strategies. It would be realistic to assert that the chances of a successful search are reduced if the coordinator cannot put those searchers in the right location. This paper examines the functionality of the SAR system in Queensland, looking at the coordination structure, the strategies utilised in determining search areas and whether they are still fit for purpose. The response to SAR is a police responsibility with the assistance of volunteer groups such as the State Emergency Service, and to this end a significant effort is undertaken to train both police coordinators and volunteer searchers.

Semi-Supervised Person Detection in Aerial Images with Instance Segmentation and Maximum Mean Discrepancy Distance

Detecting sparse, small, lost persons with only a few pixels in high-resolution aerial images was, is, and remains an important and difficult mission, in which a vital role is played by accurate monitoring and intelligent co-rescuing for the search and rescue (SaR) system. However, many problems have not been effectively solved in existing remote-vision-based SaR systems, such as the shortage of person samples in SaR scenarios and the low tolerance of small objects for bounding boxes. To address these issues, a copy-paste mechanism (ISCP) with semi-supervised object detection (SSOD) via instance segmentation and maximum mean discrepancy distance is proposed (MMD), which can provide highly robust, multi-task, and efficient aerial-based person detection for the prototype SaR system. Specifically, numerous pseudo-labels are obtained by accurately segmenting the instances of synthetic ISCP samples to obtain their boundaries. The SSOD trainer then uses soft weights to balance the prediction entropy of the loss function between the ground truth and unreliable labels. Moreover, a novel evaluation metric MMD for anchor-based detectors is proposed to elegantly compute the IoU of the bounding boxes. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on Heridal and optimized public datasets demonstrate that our approach is effective and achieves state-of-the-art person detection performance in aerial images.

Considerations on assistance and rescue at sea in the light of the increasing autonomy in shipping

The global search and rescue (SAR) system heavily relies on merchant cargo vessels for operations of assistance and rescue at sea. Conventionally, vessels proceeding to such operations have been ships with master and crew on board, at least to some extent capable of embarking and accommodating those rescued as well as providing humanitarian assistance thereto. With the introduction of ships capable of being remotely operated with no crew on board, the potential role of these vessels in the SAR system will have to be carefully appraised. In this regard, policymakers must observe that safety of life at sea is not compromised to the advantage of commercial benefits sought from the adoption of these vessels and ensure that the contribution of these vessels to SAR is maximised. This may require, in the remote operation context, a re-evaluation of the duty to assist and proceed to the rescue incumbent on conventional ships’ masters, both in terms of its scope and of those who may be charged with it. This paper points out that those operating unmanned vessels remotely may be obliged to discharge the duty, however the technical limitations of these vessels as well as the absence of humanitarian assistance on board due to unmanned operation would substantially delimit its scope. Therefore, the design and facilities of these ships must be carefully thought out to widen the scope of the duty and accordingly to maximise the contribution of these ships to the safety of life at sea.

A Capability Fitting and Data Reconstruction Model Based on Particle Swarm Optimization-Bidirectional Deep Neural Network for Search and Rescue System of Systems

Search and rescue (SAR) is an important part of joint operations and a key support for combat effectiveness. Because of the complex composition of the SAR system of systems (SoS), sensitivity analysis method is usually used to carry out sensitivity analysis of SoS capability, so as to determine the main design indicators affecting SoS capability. Reliable sensitivity analysis results are often based on the analysis for sufficient data. However, the SAR SoS capability is affected by many factors and there are numerous design indicators. Even if a small number of design points are selected for each design indicator, tens of thousands of test schemes will be formed, and carrying out all simulation tests will bring huge workload and time cost. To solve this contradiction, this paper introduces a bidirectional deep neural network (BDNN), and takes advantage of its better self-learning and adaptive features and unique structure to train the existing test data, Through strong feature extraction ability of BDNN, the network model between the design indicator and capability indicator is formed, namely, the capability fitting and data reconstruction (CFDR) model, so that the implicit relationship between the two is fixed into the model. In the training process, the number of hidden layers and neurons in each hidden layer, and the amount of training data are explored according to the training effect, so as to obtain a better parameter combination. In order to avoid introducing large cumulative errors accumulated during BDNN pre-training into DNN, particle swarm optimization (PSO) was introduced to optimize weight parameters and avoid large training errors being transmitted to deep neural network (DNN). Meanwhile, three basic functions were used to verify the strong global optimization and convergence abilities of the BDNN after optimized by the PSO (PSO-BDNN). Finally, the new test scheme is applied to the CFDR model to obtain the SoS capability value. The reconstructed data obtained from the CFDR model based on BDNN and PSO-BDNN respectively were compared with the simulation test data.The results show that the reconstruction accuracy of the CFDR model based on the PSO-BDNN is greatly improved than that of the BDNN. And the feasibility of this model as a reconstruction data generation model and the effectiveness of this model as an analysis data extension method applied to the sensitivity analysis of insufficient data to obtain reliable analysis results are verified.

DIGITAL CELLULAR TECHNOLOGIES AND GNSS WITH UAV IN SAR MISSIONS FOR PUBLIC PROTECTION AND DISASTER RELIEF SERVICES


 
 
 The objective of this paper is to analyze Digital Cellular Technologies (DCT) and European Global Navigation Satellite System (EGNSS)-Galileo with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in Search and Rescue (SAR) missions dedicated for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) services. Using desk research methodology authors will evaluate current activities being done in SAR operations in PPDR services, such as police, firefighters, military based on the new technology solutions for SAR operations that support those forces to find trapped victims or fugitives quickly and effectively, thus, improving their time-to-reaction. In conclusion authors stated that the DCT mobile SAR system based on Galileo presents the most sophisticated technology and features that go beyond the state of the art taking into consideration operation safety, reliability and commercial costs in comparison to other systems.
 
 

Long Range Based IoT Search and Rescue System, a Human-Computer Interaction Preliminary Study and Implementation

Nowadays, IoT has been introduced in different aspects of our lives giving solutions to several problems, one of which is the Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. People that suffer from dementia or people with disease in the autism spectrum tend to elope from their caretaker’s attention, a fact that can lead to serious problems. Thus, a system that takes into consideration of the multiple requirements is of paramount importance. In this paper, a LoRa based SAR system is proposed in order to help in the localization of people with high risk of going missing. In contrast to most of the related systems, in this research article a different approach has been followed. Instead of focusing on the technology, in our approach a human-centered design has been used, leveraging the knowledge of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) domain. Thus, the technologies used, are an outcome of the initial study. Finally, the system is evaluated using heuristic evaluation and questionnaires.

Water search and rescue (SAR) for ship accidents in China: analysis of 12 years’ data

Maritime search and rescue (SAR) remains a great global challenge because of the long distances, harsh environment and complicated trauma. A systematic investigation and analysis of China Maritime Search and Rescue Center (CMSRC) data has been lacking. This study aimed to provide more insightful information for future development of a better maritime and aquatic SAR system in China. This retrospective study retrieved and analyzed data on the water traffic volume from The Ministry of Transportation, People's Republic of China website and SAR data on ship accidents between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2019. Spearman's correlation test was performed to analyze the data for the number of ship accidents, number of persons in distress, number of rescued persons, SAR success rate, and SAR forces. The χ2 test was used to assess significant changes in the proportion of ship accident locations, categories, dispatched SAR forces, and location of deaths annually. The Cox Stuart test was applied to determine the trends in the data from 2008 to 2019. Between 2008 and 2019, a total of 24,013 ship accidents were reported and recorded by the CMSRC surveillance system; 209,948 persons in distress because of ship accidents were reported; 8,051 individual deaths from ship accidents. Water traffic volume and ship carrying capacity increased while the annual number of persons in distress, ship collisions, and ship collision-related deaths decreased. The SAR success rate (96.17%±0.92%) did not improve despite an increase in the number of rescue ships dispatched during this period. Helicopters (92.40±20.58 min) arrived faster than rescue ships (283.75±40.96 min) but the dispatched number of helicopters did not increase during this period. The average arrival time of nearby passing ships (41.90±7.98 min) was the shortest. CMSRC efforts mitigated the growth of ship accidents despite increasing traffic volume. More dispatched rescue ships did not improve the SAR success rate without saving arrival time. Future SAR protocols may need to increase and strengthen the role of helicopters and nearby passing ships to improve the SAR success rate.

Energy Efficiency of Transport Tasks Performed by the Air SAR System in the Baltic Sea: Case Study

The issues discussed in this article concern the energy efficiency of transport tasks carried out by the air SAR system in the Baltic Sea. Search and rescue (SAR) are rescue operations consisting of finding people in danger, providing them with help, and delivering them to a safe place. The transport task is an element of the rescue operations carried out in the open water area. It is carried out by a given type of helicopter from a strictly defined rescue base. The aim of the article is to develop a method of selecting the base and means of transport for the transport task carried out by the air SAR system, based on the assessment of energy efficiency of a given transport task. The article proposes a selection model; parameterization of the model was carried out, indicators of energy efficiency evaluation were determined, and limitations were indicated. In practical terms, the authors’ model of selection is presented on the example of transport tasks carried out by the air SAR system in the Polish zone of responsibility in the Baltic Sea.

“A Great Investment in Our Communities”: Strengthening Nunavut’s Whole-of-Society Search and Rescue Capabilities

Community-based organizations along with territorial, provincial, and federal agencies are responsible for search and rescue (SAR) in the Canadian Arctic. In delivering response capabilities at all hours of the day and for 365 days a year, the community-based organizations face a wide array of challenges. Using the data collected through the Kitikmeot Search and Rescue Project and the Kitikmeot Roundtable on SAR, coupled with academic and non-government organization literature, this article explores the major challenges facing community SAR organizations in Nunavut and builds a case for how targeted investment can best bolster community-based capabilities. We suggest novel, practical, and holistic solutions that have been proposed by or co-devised with community partners, are rooted in the unique context of Nunavut’s communities, and are reflective of a community resilience-building approach. One set of recommendations involves strengthening current programming, including the expansion of Nunavut Emergency Management’s inReach program, continued support for the enlargement of the CCGA, streamlining the process to activate Canadian Ranger patrols, and encouraging greater cooperation in the provision of training by federal and territorial agencies. We also propose new approaches, including a whole-of-society preventative SAR program centred on educational and youth programming, the adoption of a SAR equipment usage rate model, and the launch of a Community Public Safety Officer program in Nunavut. Finally, to justify greater investment at the community level, we argue that policymakers must change how they conceptualize community-based SAR capabilities in Nunavut. An effective SAR system is about more than the ability to respond to emergency events. It is a critical enabler to broader objectives and goals prioritized in the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework and other federal, territorial, and Inuit strategies.

Search and Rescue, Climate Change, and the Expansion of the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Inuit Nunangat / the Canadian Arctic

In Canada’s maritime spaces, members of the all-volunteer Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary (CCGA) provide essential marine search and rescue (SAR) services and promote boating safety. By 2015, however, only nine communities North of 55 possessed Auxiliary units and three of these struggled to remain operational. In 2020, the CCGA counted 20 units in the Coast Guard’s new Arctic Region, with 333 members and 31 vessels—the majority of which are located in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in Canada) and comprised of Inuit members—and plans for future expansion.
 Based on stakeholder engagement, government documents, and media analysis, this article assesses the Coast Guard’s Arctic Search and Rescue Project and the concomitant programming under the Oceans Protection Plan that has facilitated the Auxiliary’s expansion in the Arctic. Our analysis asks two overarching questions: Why has this program been able to expand the Auxiliary after previous efforts failed? How has this expansion improved the SAR system and marine safety in Canada’s Arctic, and are there areas for improvement?
 The article makes four primary arguments:
 
 The success of the project has been fueled by strong community engagement and relationship-building efforts, effective data collection that has fostered a better understanding of the marine risks facing Arctic communities, and consistent access to the training and equipment required to safely conduct marine SAR operations
 Members of Arctic Auxiliary units strengthen SAR operations by improving response times, serving as SAR detectives, contributing to marine safety, and, most importantly, by integrating their local and traditional knowledge and skills into the broader search and rescue system.
 Training and organizational gaps exist that should be addressed as the Coast Guard continues to bolster existing units and establish new ones.
 The Arctic SAR Project has provided several best practices and lessons that should guide the implementation of additional resilience-building measures in the North and in other Indigenous communities.

Implementation of the modeling and simulation software of search and rescue system based Korea navigation satellite system

This paper describes the development of M&S (Modeling and Simulation) system based COSPAS-SARSAT SAR (Search and Rescue) system. SAR system transmits a distress signal to the terminal and transmits it to the satellite network or the terrestrial network. It recognized distress incident from anywhere in the world. The M&S system is designed to analyze the accuracy, reliability, and availability of the SAR (Search and Rescue) system. It is also designed to simulate the actual distress beacons of a distress situation. It was developed to enable performance analysis. We will verify the validity of the implemented results, applying the RF signal processing based on KNSS.

GIS-based cost distance modelling to support strategic maritime search and rescue planning: A feasibility study

Geographic information system (GIS) based methodologies are widely used to various problems. However, its potential for application to strategic maritime search and rescue (SAR) planning remains largely unexplored. To investigate the applicability of GIS-based tools to this problem, this paper presents an approach to evaluate accessibility and response times in a sea area. Such information aids to objectify the response effectiveness of a SAR system, which is important for rational resource allocation. The presented methodology accounts for the main characteristics of maritime response, namely spatial accessibility, capabilities of search and rescue units (SRUs) and prevailing wave conditions, which affect the attainable SRU speeds. An application to the Finnish areas of the Gulf of Finland is shown. Despite the existence of some difficulties with currently available tools (e.g. accurate and user-friendly spatial wave models and challenges with using raster-based methods in topologically complex areas) and limitations in knowledge (e.g. the SRU capabilities in actual operations), the results indicate that the methodology provides good opportunities for enhancing maritime decision making.

Evidence-Based Analysis of Search and Rescue Operations Following the Great East Japan Earthquake

The March 11, 2011 earthquake off Japan’s northeast (Tohoku) Pacific coast and the resulting gigantic tsunamis took the lives of nearly 18,000 people in the devastated coastal communities. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, now called Great East Japan Earthquake, search and rescue (SAR) for those who were trapped in tsunami waters and debris and who were missing was the top priority in the integrated emergency response. Eventually, SAR operations were performed on an unprecedented scale and complexity. This being the case, a strong interest in the details of these activities has surfaced and frequent enquiries have often been made both from within Japan and from overseas. Still, few studies have been conducted to-date on how SAR operations were performed and what lessons have been learned as a result. By analyzing the experiences of fire service rescue workers, this paper identifies challenges and gaps that the SAR system – institutions, policy frameworks and instruments, skills and techniques, equipment, etc. – could not fully deal with. This paper also looks at the lessons learned to examine the reasons behind them and to explore ways forward that may enable us to be better prepared for future disasters of a similar kind.