Robert Koester, 'Lost Person Behavior'
The standard search-and-rescue handbook (2008), built on a database of over 50,000 incidents, describing where different kinds of lost people tend to go and be found.
2008 CE · 38.03, -78.48 · status: official
The account
Robert J. Koester compiled the International Search and Rescue Incident Database (ISRID) and published 'Lost Person Behavior' through dbS Productions in 2008. It sorts lost people into 41 categories (young children by age band, hunters, hikers, people with dementia, despondent people and so on) and gives, for each, typical distances from the point last seen, elevation change, survivability and where they are usually found. Search planners use it to decide where to look first. Several Missing 411 'profile points' are ordinary entries in this data: small children who travel surprisingly far or climb, people with dementia who walk into thick cover, and victims found in areas that had been searched but not seen closely.
The sceptical view
This is the research base critics cite against the Missing 411 framing.
Connections in the atlas
- Terrence Woods Jr., Nez Perce National Forest
- Jon Billman, 'The Cold Vanish'
- Garrett Bardsley, Uinta Mountains
- Kris 'Sherpa' Fowler, Pacific Crest Trail
- Michelle Vanek, Mount of the Holy Cross
- Derrick Engebretson, Winema National Forest
- Michael Henley Jr., Zuni Mountains
- Christopher Ramirez, Grimes County
- 'Missing 411: The Hunted'
- 'Dead Men Walking': search and rescue in US national parks
- Geraldine Largay, Appalachian Trail
- Bill Ewasko, Joshua Tree