High-tech signposts to safe return

When seven-year-old Jeff Pettitt went missing from a Nordegg campground May 15, search and rescue workers turned to a database on human behaviour.

It narrowed the area to a thin three-km wedge from the vast circle they would normally search. They found Jeff just two hours later, suffering from hypothermia and huddled under a tree by the river.

"Normally, we would have gone out farther or closer and we might have missed him," says Rocky Mountain House search master Richard Smith. He says the database told them a boy Jeff's age would go towards water. "This data has life-and-death consequences. It eliminates about 80 per cent of the area we would have covered otherwise."

For the last two years, the former RCMP search-and-rescue co-ordinator has been using the database for searches around Rocky Mountain House, where 12 to 24 people go missing each year.

The computerized system analyses factors such as how far, and in which direction, hikers, mountain bikers and cross-country skiers might go. It identifies which landmarks a toddler, as opposed to a 40-year-old, might use to find the way.

Compiled at the University of Alberta and available on the Internet, the information is based on an analysis of more than 200 cases of missing persons from southwestern Alberta. Now its U of A designers want to improve the database by adding digital landscape imaging software known as Geographic Information Systems.

U of A behavioural scientist and psychology professor Don Heth says the software would combine geography and psychology to automatically pinpoint on a map the exact trail or riverbed a missing person might follow. It would save valuable search time by doing away with time-consuming math and manual circle-drawing.

"This GIS software is new and exciting because it would give us a precise spot to check first," says Smith. "There's a good chance (the missing person will) be there.

"Though none of this information is absolute, it will certainly make search and rescue efforts quicker, more effective and economical."

GIS is the same software used to track criminals. Heth says his work is similar to criminal profiling, except he looks at "normal people in abnormal situations."

Before Heth and fellow U of A psychology professor Ed Cornell began their research in the 1980s, Canadian search teams had to rely on American information about missing persons. Now searchers in southwestern Alberta can draw on local resources.

The team's ultimate goal is to create a national on-line reporting system with customized geographic information. They are also studying people lost in urban areas.

Within two years, he hopes to use the information added to the database to find children lost in the city.

"We would look at the geography of the town and correlate kids' behaviour in that environment," says Heth. "Then a computerized system would isolate kids' black holes of wandering, lighting up things like playgrounds and convenience stores on a virtual map."

Edmonton police Const. Paul Olmstead says urban research is needed.

"Missing persons cases are always more publicized in the wilderness because they are usually more spectacular events," says Olmstead. "But I'd say more people actually get lost and go missing in the city."

These are mainly young children lost in shopping centres, at fairs or in a new neighbourhood, or seniors with Alzheimer's disease who stray and forget their way home.

Olmstead is one of 12 search managers with the Edmonton police. Edmonton is one of the few cities in Canada to have its own team of search managers trained to professional standards and on 24-hour call.

When the team is called out on a search, it often notifies Heth and Cornell so they can interview missing people who have been found.

As part of the U of A team's urban studies, research assistant Tonya Flood studies how people get lost and then find their way. She does that by walking unsuspecting test subjects around the campus, distracting them in key areas and asking questions along the way.

Once they reach the opposite end of the campus, she asks test subjects to point to where they started. Using a map and compass, she records the accuracy of their sense of direction. Then she asks them to lead her back to where they began.

In a related study, she asks children to lead her to a place close to their home that they have visited only once or twice before. She'll tag along, taking note of how far the kids will travel, what they do if they get lost, and what kind of landmarks they use to remember the way.

Flood says some children get lost easily because they tend to use temporary landmarks such as a Go Oilers sign or a cat in the window which won't necessarily be there on the way home.

She's also learned that while adults see a "shortcut" as a faster way of getting somewhere, kids will use the term to denote a more interesting or adventurous route, which often takes longer.

Heth and Cornell are to discuss the urban studies with an international group of search specialists and display their database at a national search-and-rescue symposium in Banff from Sept. 23 to 27.

"Search and rescue is a team effort and the dogs and searchers who work relentlessly to do the actual finding are the real heroes," says Cornell. "Us? We just provide them with a tool."

* MISSING KIDS

* 58,097 children went missing across Canada in 1997. Most -- 45,527 -- were runaways.

* 8,045 children went missing in Alberta in the same year. Only 504 wandered off, or were lost for unknown reasons.

Source: RCMP Missing Children's Registry