Thursday, March 01, 2007

Drifting behavior while searching

This series of images comes from the presentation of Art Allen (USCG) on SAROPS. One can clearly sees that drift is an important component of the search activity while the search is underway. Another question begs to be answered: how come the search grid is not uniform in order to provide efficient information ?





2 comments:

ctwardy said...

The search paths seem to be uniformly spaced parallel legs, with turns. That's a pretty uniform pattern, subject to flight constraints, no?

I believe SAROPS does try some alternate patterns or orientations to see which give the best expected probability of success in actual (simulated) drift encounters, going beyond the basic allocation assumption of uniform density within a grid cell.

But I think the patterns it tries are all basically regular: parallel line, expanding rectangle, ....

Igor said...

Thank you. I guess the question I had was really about missing some target that was drifting while the search is underway. Clearly in the consecutive screenshot I took, there are elements that are not being detected in the rectangle searched. So the idea is: is there a possibility that using this type of grid search will allow you to miss entirely a boat.

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