Jan Růžička
I work as a freelancer for several subjects in the area of GIS research and development. My main partners for now are CybELE, Czech University of Life Sciences, GISMentors and VSB - Technical University of Ostrava.
Sessions
The Search and Rescue mission is a difficult task and must be supported with several inputs. The main inputs are people that are searching in the field, such as handlers with dogs, riders on horses, riders on motor vehicles, organized groups of people usually from police or fire brigade. These people have to be managed by a commander of the search and rescue mission. The commander has to select areas where the searchers should search and should have feedback on the search progress. The main problem for search and rescue missions is time. The mission should start as soon as possible. We have developed under coordination of Czech University of Life Sciences and in cooperation with several subjects such as Police of the Czech Republic and Rescue Mountain Service of the Czech Republic plugin for QGIS that helps with management of the search and rescue mission. The plugin named Pátrač allows to prepare the mission in five simple steps, where the commander describes the situation (type of the missing person, place of the last seen, ...) and as a result obtains map for print and GPX files for searchers. The management allows editing progress of the search, analyzing search tracks, and other functionality. The plugin is developed to always work in a case of not available internet connection, but if the connection is available, there is other useful functionality, such as searching for available dog handlers and requesting them for a duty or showing searchers tracks in real time. The plugin is now in a testing phase used by Police of the Czech Republic and Rescue Mountain Service of the Czech Republic for real search and rescue missions.