A procedure for delineating a search region in the UAV-based SAR activities

Abstract

We propose a simple geometrical approach for delineating a region above which an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) should fly to support the Search and Rescue (SAR) activities. The procedure is based on the concept of a crow's flight distance travelled by a lost person and its probability distribution, for areas in which there does not exist any SAR database that can be used to estimate parameters of such a distribution. The novelty of the procedure lies in its indirect character, namely we do not estimate these parameters but we seek regions that reveal comparable topographic settings in order to borrow the parameters from where they are known. Our analysis focuses on the Wakeby probability distribution of the crow's flight distance, the parameters of which are known for Alberta in Canada. We compare topographic and ecological characteristics of Alberta with the same features in Poland and argue that – under a few assumptions – it is allowed to use the Wakeby probabilistic model for the Canadian region in Polish conditions. Having borrowed the parameters in question, we present the skills of the geometrical approach in an experiment that utilizes flight simulations carried out with two professional micro UAV systems.

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