Improving the search for victims in mountain environments with geovisualization and competing hypotheses management

Abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> This article is part of a research program aimed at improving the location of victims in the mountains. The search for victim location is a process involving various elements, few of them falls within the scope of our team such as the modelling of the process of spatial reasoning of the rescuer and the geovisualization of multidimensional and uncertain information for decision-making. After having reviewed the various scientific challenges we propose a prototype of interface. The strengths of our approach are the transformation of location clues into a list of spatial filters, the addition of these filters within a search scenario to create probable location area(s) as well as the simultaneous management of competing search scenarios. We also present the results of user tests, validating the interest of such an approach to objectify the area of probable location of the victim and obtain a more precise area than during the traditional search approach. Finally, we will discuss the improvements underway on the basis of this prototype, in particular how we plan to better account for the uncertainty in the decision-making process and how we plan to allow a future prototype to suggest questions to the rescuer in order to help him/her refine his/her research.</p>

GASPAR —Geoviz Application for Searching And Rescuing People

“…Cette matérialisation sur la carte rend explicite une opération préalablement réalisée de manière implicite (que ce soit par le secouriste ou dans la précédente version du prototype qui n'était pas basée sur l'OAC, cf. Viry et al 2019). Elle permet de concentrer le regard sur l'intérieur de la ZIR sans toutefois priver le secouriste du contexte environnant.…”

An approach for identifying and analysing reference features and spatial relations used in mountain emergency calls

“…The task of the rescuer who receives an emergency call is to transform the collected set of clues (indirect spatial referencing) into a set of possible locations expressed as coordinates on a map (direct spatial referencing). The CHOUCAS project tackles three major issues related to this process: the collection, enrichment and query of geographic data stemming from heterogeneous sources (Gaio and Moncla, 2019;Van Damme et al, 2019); the conception of geovisualisation environments aiming at supporting the reasoning of the rescue workers (Viry et al, 2019); and the conception of models for semi-automated spatial reasoning based on the clues extracted from the calls to compute an area for each clue (Bunel et al, 2018) and to fusion them to generate a probable location (a fuzzy area) where the victim can be. Underlying these issues (especially the second and third ones), is the necessity to understand and formalise the information contained in such clues in order to be able to exploit them.…”