Published Papers
The papers require Adobe Acrobat Reader and may be read online or downloaded.
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Inter-agency rescue, 2009
This article describes work done with a number of police forces in connection with missing person searches.
Copyright IHS (Global) Limited 2009, Jane's Police Review. Photographs reproduced with permission.
www.policereview.com -
Why do people get lost?, 2008
A paper presented by Ged Feeney, an Associate of The Centre for Search Research, at the 2008 UK MR conference. It describes a survey by the author to follow up incidents involving missing hikers reported in 2007 as part of the UK Missing Person study.
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Lost and overdue: issues when children are missing, 2008
This is a Powerpoint presentation delivered by Pete Roberts at the 2008 UK MR conference. It deals with issues relating to searching for missing children, in particular the information that is available in a variety of missing person databases.
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New issues in searching: UK MR conference, 2008
A Powerpoint presentation by Dave Perkins at the 2008 UK MR conference. It deals with estimating field team POD by means of critical separation and the critical separation POD graph.
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Critical Separation and POD for Grid Searching by a land SAR Field Team, 2008
This paper uses ideas from the earlier papers on critical distance to show how critical separation can be used to provide an estimate of POD for grid searching by a land SAR field team. The method described uses field procedures and simple calculations.
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The critical distance POD curve, 2008
This is a full page version of the graph for the critical distance method, together with a table of the values on which it is based for users who prefer to use a table of values rather than graph.
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The Critical Distance Method, 2008
This paper describes a procedure that gives land SAR planners the ability to use search theory to estimate grid search PODs, using a value for sweep width that is found by the field team
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Lateral Range Curves, Search Probabilities and Grid Searching, 2008
This paper explains how an understanding of lateral range curves is a good starting point for understanding the application of search theory to land SAR. Co-authored with David Lovelock
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Sector Ladder, 2005
The original Sector Ladder document was published in 1994. This is a re-presentation of the original; the only changes made have been to tidy up the language in places.
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Use of Scenarios in Search Management, 2004
This document discusses the use of scenarios in search management. Note that the PowerPoint slide show that originally accompanied this document is no longer available.
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Searching at night, 2003
This is an extract from the field skills course run by The Centre for Search Research. It deals with the principles of night vision, suitable lighting and suggested tactics.
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Critical Separation, 2003
This is an extract from the handbook that accompanies The Centre for Search Research search skills training course. It deals with searcher spacing and critical separation. There is a discussion about searching in different phases of an incident.
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Observations From UK Dog Training Data, 2001
The assessment of air scenting search dogs in the UK generates a great amount of numerical data. This paper looks at some of the statistics that can be derived from this data.
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Establishing the Search Area, 1998
The paper considers some misunderstandings in the use of distance travelled data from missing person statistics. By examining the original work done by Syrotuck in the 1970's, the paper develops an alternative method.