NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville, VA News, Sports and Weather
Short interview showcasing GIS for search and rescue. The reporter only identifies the system as "ArcGIS" but I believe it is Don Ferguson's IGT4SAR.
Asides
RIP Dennis Lindley
One of the giants in Bayesian statistics passed away at his home earlier this week, coincidentally at the start of the O'Bayes 250 conference marking the 250th anniversary of the publication of Bayes' paper. Writeup in X'ian's 'Og.
Successful Drone SAR
Thanks to Mike Goodrich for this RCMP Drone story. In short, the RCMP spotted a stranded driver by using a drone-mounted infrared camera.
We hope the FAA soon settles on good regulations for such drone use in the US.
Paul Doherty's Research Page
Links to Paul Doherty's new research page. Elena Sava has been testing a simple watershed model that Paul helped develop: it scores about 0.55. Considering the simplicity, that's pretty good.
Just a quick note to highlight Paul Doherty's new research page. It includes:
- Overview of his research
- Publications list
- Software & Datasets page, including links to MapSAR and discussion groups.
- Linkspage with a SAR & GIS bibliography including the memorably titled
- Heggie, Travis W, and Michael E Amundson. 2009. “Dead Men Walking: Search and Rescue in US National Parks.” Wilderness & Environmental Medicine.
- And the humorously mangled: Is, Information, Releasable To, and Foreign Nationals. “Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System ( SAROPS ).” Training 2.
- And three articles it sounds like I should read soon:
- Jobe, T.R., and P.S. White. 2009. “A New Cost-distance Model for Human Accessibility and an Evaluation of Accessibility Bias in Permanent Vegetation Plots in Great Smoky Mountains National Park , USA.” Journal of Vegetation Science: 1099–1109.
- Miller, Harvey J., and Scott a. Bridwell. 2009. “A Field-Based Theory for Time Geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (1) (January 8): 49–75. link
- Pingel, Thomas J. 2011. “Estimating an Empirical Hiking Function from GPS Data.” Sports Medicine: 1–3.
At Mason we're collaborating with Paul to test a Watershed-Distance model developed by his research group. Based on 58 tests run so far by Elena Sava on MapScore, this simple model scores 0.55. Not bad for a model that doesn't yet discriminate by category (or any other feature). Elena just finished a multivariate model combining Watersheds with the more usual crows'-flight distance, and we will begin testing that soon.
Rabbit on Search Management
A. A. Milne, "The Search for Small", The House at Pooh Corner
"Now," said Rabbit, "this is a Search, and I've Organized it------".
"Done what to it?" said Pooh.
"Organized it. Which means---well, it's what you do to a Search, when you don't all look in the same place at once."