Bayesian methods for WiSAR
OSARA conference link, with highlights from Ken Chiacchia's talk.
The Ohio SAR Association conference has posted their 2013 talks online.
Note particularly:
When searching for an image for this post, I came across several works by E.B. Banning applying search theory to archaeology:
Now what would archaeologists be doing with sweep widths? Looking for nails, shards, and other small objects in the soil. What they nicely call "small scatters of generally unobtrusive artifacts on the surface".
In WiSAR we call them clues.
Continue reading ""Small Scatters of Generally Unobtrusive Artifacts""
In the previous post, we began to build a theory of detection over time as the result of a very large number of independent glimpses. By assuming the environment to be fixed for awhile, we moved all the environmental factors into a constant (to be measured and tabulated), and simplified the function so it depended only on the range to the target.
In this post we simplify still further, introducing lateral range curves and the sweep width (also known as effective sweep width). We will follow Washburn's Search & Detection, Chapter 2. (So there's nothing new in this post. Just hopefully a clear and accessible presentation.)
We begin a four-part gentle introduction to search theory. Our topic is visual detection of targets by land searchers. Today we summarize Koopman Chapter 3, constructing the useful "inverse cube" detection model by starting from instantaneous glimpses with tiny detection probabilities.
Don Ferguson just sent me an update on the MapSAR project -- he's presenting at a project meeting this week in the Grand Canyon. I'm blown away by his slides. They've got it: a GIS enabled search planning tool with a foundation in search theory. They've even got tools for various kinds of probability maps, and POD models. I'd only been following this peripherally. That has to change. I've just signed up for the various groups and can't wait to test the software.
Lin & Goodrich at Brigham Young are working on Bayesian motion models for generating probability maps. They have an interesting model, but need GPS tracks to train it. It's a nice complement to our approach, and it will be interesting to see how they compare.
~Originally a very cool review published in the first half of 2010. The review led to phone calls and a very productive collaboration on MapScore and other work.
Partly reconstructed March 2012.
Comments on the 2004 draft of "Controversial Topics in Inland SAR Planning" by Dan O'Connor. Written in 2004, updated in 2007.
Preface
This open letter was written in 2004. At the time, some people found it useful. In 2007, I updated it as a blog post. It was lost in the ISP crash of Oct. 2011. In Feb. 2013, I exhumed it and posted to this WordPress site. I finally fixed the formatting in Aug. 2014. As of Feb. 2013, the Internet Archive still had the original 2004 post and the updated 2007 post. In my 2007 update, I wrote this preface:
Things have moved on a bit since then [2004]. In the summer of 2006, Rick Toman and Dan O'Connor organized sweep width experiments in the Berkshires, and provided a "Camp David" style setting for ISAR and MSAR folks to meet. (Unfortunately, it shamefully took me a over a year to finish analyzing that and get the spreadsheet back to Rick. I think I still haven't posted it here. [See Berkshires 2006 Sweep Width Experiment].) As I note below, there have been developments in adding MSAR ideas to new versions of standard of SAR software. But, as an exercise in blogging, here is the original post again, with minimal edits to get it displayed properly here.
The following paper creates landmine probability maps almost precisely in the way that I have wanted to create lost person behavior probability maps. (I'll add some more notes on it later.)
(This is recovered from an old history sidebar for SORAL. The code was updated in 2008 for the AGMSAR package.)
Version 2.0 release scheduled for 28 Feb 2003.
Jan. 2003: The code is now fully redocumented using dOxygen!! The public interface can be seen here. The private interface is available to developers upon request and right now is available here. In both cases the Developer's Manual is available under the "Related Pages" link in the header. Thanks to André Oboler!
Continue reading "SARBayes Optimal Resource Allocation Library"
