Page 12 - 20145 AMA Spring

Heading into the Mountains this weekend?
If the answer is ‘Yes’, bring your smart phone!
Written by Ryan Lang
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It has been estimated that over 360,000 walkers reach the summit of Snowdon every year, never mind the hundreds of other hills and mountains in the UK. It is no wonder that with the large
amount of human traffic in our mountain regions, many at some time find themselves in a precarious situation either being lost, injured or both.
Mountain Rescue Teams have saved the lives of thousands of people in the UK alone. Volunteers give up their spare time in the hope that they can help people in their time of need. Locating these people can be a time consuming business.
SARLOC (Search And Rescue LOCation) is a system that can be used to locate a lost person by using their smart phone as a type of personal locator beacon.
Russ Hore volunteered in Mountain Rescue for 20 years. Whilst working for Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation (OVMRO) he thought that it would be useful if the MRT members could be tracked via their GPS enabled radios. Being a computer programmer, he began working on the project, but soon discovered that a colleague in one of the Lakes teams, Dave Binks, had developed an application called MR Map that did just what was needed and is used by all MRTs in the UK and Ireland.
At this point, Russ decided to re-focus his efforts on developing a system that could be used to locate lost persons via their mobile phone. With the ever-increasing use of smartphones he felt there must be a way for the user’s phone to provide location data to MRT.
Using features of the ‘phone’s web browser, Russ developed SARLOC which was first used to locate a lost person at 12:45 on the 27th of May 2011 from Snowdon. The Llanberis team took a call from a party lost somewhere on Snowdon but the call was cut short when voice communication with the party was lost. The team sent a SARLOC request to the number and within seconds had a grid reference for the party. They directed the helicopter ot the grid and it was soon hovering above the lost party.
Russ very kindly agreed to be interviewed by the AMA to discuss the evolution of SARLOC and allow me to test it on a recent trip to North Wales.
How does SARLOC work?
SARLOC works in three slightly different ways.
1st Method
When the MRT is informed of a lost person, the team uses SARLOC to send the lost person a text message that contains a web link. Once the lost person clicks on the link, SARLOC interrogates the phone for its location. Once the location has been determined, it is added to a database and then displayed on MR Map within the MRT HQ.
2nd Method
A mobile phone can be used to send a text message containing a lost persons phone number to SARLOC. SARLOC responds by sending a text message with the web link to the lost person. Once SARLOC has located the lost person, it sends a text message with the lost persons location to the mobile phone which first initiated the request. This is invaluable when the team does not have access to the internet as all communications is via SMS.
3rd Method
The lost persons phone number is entered into MR Map using a drop down menu. MR Map then requests SARLOC to locate the lost person. SARLOC responds with the lost persons location and displays the result in MR Map.
What benefit does SARLOC provide to the MRT?
The greatest benefit is MRTs can pinpoint a lost person in any weather conditions, day or night, saving many hours of searching. At a recent MR conference it was estimated SARLOC has saved