Search results

It is a well held belief that the full moon period and the date Friday 13th has an impact on the number of emergency call outs for emergency services. The purpose of this paper is to critically explore that belief. It also examines the versatility and richness of response records, and demonstrates the effectiveness of combining data sets.

The work takes four varied data sets, from four rescue agencies along with the International Search and Rescue Database and compared the average number of calls on a full moon night, non-full moon and full moon period (the full moon night, the day before and day after). The average number of incidents on Friday 13th was also investigated. It uses a statistical approach to test the difference between “normal” dates and those dates traditionally believed to be busier.

Although there were differences between Friday 13th, full moon nights, full moon periods and “normal” days, the differences were in general extremely small, not significantly significant and in most cases actually dropped during the supposedly unlucky period. The exception to this is a very small increase in the average number of responses during full moons for most data sets, although this was not statistically significant. This paper concludes that there is no evidence in the data for any impact of the full moon upon rescue teams’ activities.

This research deals with a small set of responses, from the UK only, and addresses an issue that is clearly not the most pressing. However, it does demonstrate evidenced-based management in practice, in that resources have incorrectly been assigned in the past to these dates.

This work shows that preconceptions exist within the emergency services and that, without evidence-led management, resources can be allocated on hearsay. This shows that widely available software and techniques can be applied to organisational data and used to make management decisions more appropriate.

Rescue organisations are almost exclusively charity or public sector organisations, meaning that their budgets are sourced from donations or the tax-payer. Putting to bed misconceptions over resources for certain dates will ultimately benefit society in those terms.

There has been very little work on this phenomenon, although some works on A&E department admissions have taken place. This is the only work to date to combine data in this way for this purpose.

The purpose of this paper is to give an account for preparative collaboration between the police and municipal eldercare in Sweden concerning missing persons with dementia.

Design/methodology/approach used was a qualitative case study design, consisting of one focus group with representatives for the participating organisations, followed by directed content analysis.

The findings showed a lack of current collaboration and reluctance to new collaborative initiatives. However, when focussing on preparative collaboration of coordinated responses to missing incidents, possibilities for improvement could be identified. The improvements concerned updated personnel response checklists, along with suggestions for an elaborate life story document in eldercare, with police access. Finally, better coordination of the return of the found person and a follow up were proposed.

It is suggested that collaboration must be given different meanings and use different approaches adapted to the different phases in a rescue operation. In the preparation and the response phase, the focus should be on coordination of the resources available. In the pre-planning and prevention phases, as well as in evaluation and learning, horizontal collaboration is more suitable. The amount of data in this study is a research limitation which calls for further research.

It is suggested that collaboration must be given different meanings and use different approaches adapted to the different phases in a rescue operation. In the preparation and the response phase, the focus should be on coordination of the resources available. In the pre-planning and prevention phases, as well as in evaluation and learning, horizontal co-operation is more suitable.

The originality/value of this paper can be found in the novelty of missing person research in Sweden, and in practical suggestions for preparative collaboration concerning persons with dementia who go missing. Finally, it can be found in the suggested need for a more dynamic and process-sensitive view of collaboration in SAR or rescue operations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and describe a pixel‐based airborne hyperspectral remote sensing system approach for searching for missing and lost RMAF aircraft, especially the NURI helicopter that crashed in Genting‐Sempah, Malaysia on Friday 13 July 2007, ten minutes after leaving the RMAF 10th Squadron based in Sg. Besi Camp, Selangor, Malaysia. It was reported found crashed with all six air force crew onboard killed, four days later on 17 July 2007 at 13.25 hours 5 km North‐west of Genting‐Sempah‐Karak‐Highway.

The objective is achieved by exploring the use of a very high 1 m² spatial resolution (pixel‐based) airborne hyperspectral imaging system near real‐time data processing within two hours after landing. The UPM‐Aeroscan's AISA is a state‐of‐the‐art aircraft mounted commercial hyperspectral sensor operated for SAR development application by Forest Geospatial Information and Survey Lab (FGISL)/Aeroscan Precision (M) Sdn Bhd. in Block C3, UPM‐MTDC Tech Centre, Lebuh Silikon, Universiti Putra Malaysia. It is designed to provide a near real time, frequent, repetitive, accurate and reliable pushbroom instrument that acquires images in hundreds of registered, contiguous narrow spectral band passes such that for each element it is possible to derive a complete reflectance spectrum between the tree crowns, a damaged or slashed tree canopy and an anomaly especially metal like foreign object that penetrates into the tree crowns of a dense forest. Using an advanced Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) digital analysis and two archives spectral signatures of flying and “parked” NURI helicopters, in addition to ground supporting data from the civilian eye‐witnesses, spectral matching of images is applied to identify and map the missing helicopter.

Despite the bad weather hampering the search and air surveillance‐to‐ground verifications, the NURI helicopter was reported found crashed with all six air force crew onboard killed, four days later based on the GPS suspected locations analysed and mapped from the UPM‐APSB's AISA airborne hyperspectral sensor data. The GPS locations given by the image were, however, not accurate for ground verifications since an old military topographical map were used. The GPS locations from the airborne image was transferred on to a Google Earth image in the Operations Room but, for ground verifications, a different set of reference topographical maps were used. However, the suspected search target sites were not that far away from the actual sighted RMAF NURI helicopter wreckage.

The value and contribution of this research are the successful application of operating a pixel‐based airborne hyperspectral sensor to locate missing military helicopters in SAR. It is expected that the UPM‐APSB's AISA airborne hyperspectral sensor can be of further use in future SAR for missing civilian helicopters or commercial aircraft.