A hiker's last known position, before anyone calls it in
SAR Helper records where a hiker has been walking, and gives them a way to put
their coordinates in front of a responding team — before an emergency, or moments before they
dial.
It never dispatches anyone, and it never contacts a
team. No alert, no pager, no email. It is a database that gets looked in once a
call has already arrived through the normal channels.
That is deliberate. A system that pages a volunteer team gets
switched off after the third false alarm. This one costs nothing until the day it helps.
1.The problem
Two of them, and they are separate. The first is about the hours before anybody calls; the
second is about the call itself.
People do not report a position until well after it would have been useful
Most people who get into difficulty in the backcountry are not certain they are in
difficulty. They are unsure. They wander, and they usually find the trail again — and
because they are unsure, they do not want to waste anybody's time. So they say nothing, for
hours, until it is dark and they are cold and now they are genuinely lost, several
kilometres from where the trouble started.
By then the useful information — where were they when things started going wrong,
and which way were they heading — is gone. A search begins with a trailhead and a
description.
Coordinates still often do not survive the 911 call
In Canada today a caller's GPS position frequently does not reach the responding team
through the call itself. The hiker is on the phone reading numbers off a screen, or
describing a creek, and the coordinates get written down, relayed, and sometimes lost
between the call taker and the people walking in.
That is a solved problem everywhere except where it matters, and it is not one a small
app can fix at the source. What it can do is provide a second path that does not go through
the call at all.
2.The concept
Make recording a position cost the hiker nothing, and put the result somewhere a responding
team can open. Nothing else: no alerting, no monitoring, no promise that anyone is watching.
A hiker scans a QR code on a sign. That gives them a web page — or, if they have installed
the app, the app — and one button. Whatever they send lands in a database that a team covering
that ground can search after a call reaches them through the channels it always does.
The two paths meet at the team and nowhere else. SAR Helper cannot start a search,
and a search does not depend on it — which is why the second path is drawn unchanged.
Every screen in the app says that nobody has been
notified. It is repeated to the point of monotony, because a hiker who believes a
rescue is already coming will sit still and wait for it.
Both problems fall out of the same mechanism. The hiker who checks in at the gondola has
recorded a position hours before anyone would have thought to ask for one; the hiker who flags
themselves before dialling has put exact coordinates in front of the team without them having
to survive the call.
3.What the user sees
The sign
A weatherproof sticker on a trailhead board or at a junction where people go wrong,
carrying a domain a person can remember and a short code identifying that particular
sign.
Scanning it is the only thing the hiker has to think of doing. There is no app to have
heard of beforehand and nothing to sign up for.
A scan on its own records the code and the time — not the phone, not an address, nothing
about who walked past. Somebody who scans a poster out of curiosity has not entered the
system.
Signs learn their own position from hikers who scan them and then share a
location, so nobody has to survey where each one was installed, and a sign that gets moved
corrects itself.
The domain is the largest line, so it can be recalled hours later without the
sign in front of them.
The website — for the majority, who will not install anything
A page that loads on one bar of signal, with no images and no scripts. It is not a
cut-down version of the app; it is a way to send one position without installing anything,
for the majority who never will.
The same address opens in a different order depending on the sign that was scanned. At a
trailhead nobody is in trouble yet, so the app leads. At a junction where people go wrong,
may be lost leads. Somebody who simply typed the address in gets neither
assumption.
Two levels, and both are always offered: check in records where they
are, and may be lost records the same position with a flag on it. Keeping
those apart is the entire design — a hiker offered only "I am lost" usually sends nothing at
all, because pressing it feels like raising an alarm.
Nothing is sent until the hiker presses something, and the page says plainly, after they
do, that nobody has been notified.
The trailhead version. Under 7 KB on the wire, in four languages, and it
works with JavaScript off.
The app — for the ones who do
Same two levels, plus the thing a web page cannot do: it keeps recording while the phone is
in a pocket. With no signal it holds the backlog and sends it when signal returns. The map draws
the hiker their own trail, so it doubles as a way back.
Checking in, with an optional note. The note is where a trip plan goes — where
they are going, when they expect to be back, what they are wearing.Two states, ever: sharing, or not sharing. A notification stays up the whole
time it runs.After flagging. Standing down is always the other option and always first. The
911 button is the only route to a call in the whole product, and it opens the keypad rather
than dialling.
No account and no sign-up, in either place. Identity is a random id the phone
generates for that outing; a name appears only if one is typed.
4.What the SAR team sees
A web console, behind a sign-in, showing only the ground the team is responsible for.
Everyone currently reporting in the team's area. A phone that stops reporting for
ten minutes is marked gone dark — usually a flat battery or a valley with no
coverage, occasionally something else. Someone who used the website instead sends one position
and then nothing, and the console says so rather than implying they are still being
followed.One hiker. The trip plan is the hiker's own words about what they
intended — often not where they ended up, and frequently the single most useful
sentence in a search. Name, year of birth and the note are optional and typed by the hiker;
nothing is verified, and the console says so.The route walked, oldest to newest, and the exports: GPX, GeoJSON, CalTopo, Google
Maps. Coordinates copy in decimal degrees and in degrees-and-decimal-minutes — the format that
gets read over a radio.A hiker who has flagged themselves: the flag, their own words, the plan they set
off with, and an exact position that did not have to survive being read aloud down a phone
line.
How a callout would go
6:40 pm
A hiker comes off the Habrich loop above the
gondola, flags themselves in the app, and calls 911.
6:52 pm
The call reaches the team through the channels it always does.
SAR Helper has played no part so far.
6:55 pm
Someone with a console login searches the name, or draws a polygon
around the area.
6:56 pm
If the hiker used it: an exact position, the route they walked to get
there, how much battery remained, and the plan they set off with.
6:56 pm
If they did not: nothing, and the search proceeds exactly as it would
have.
The last row matters as much as the one above it. This is not a system anyone has to rely
on. It is a system that occasionally saves hours.
What a team would need to provide
Sign-in
Existing Google or Microsoft accounts, restricted to
the team's domain. No new passwords.
An area
A polygon for the ground the team is responsible for. It decides which
tracks they can see, and which hikers are told they are covered.
Nothing else
No integration, no radio work, no change to how the team is
dispatched, and no obligation to look at it.
5.Data storage and security
Kept for
7 days, then deleted. A safety
net, not a record. Nothing accumulates, so there is nothing to subpoena a year later and
nothing to lose in a breach that is older than last week.
Who can see it
Only teams whose area covers the position, and only after
signing in. Hikers outside any registered area are told, in the app, that nobody is reading
it.
Identity
None. A random id per outing. A name only if one is typed. There is
no account to compromise, because there are no accounts.
Residency
The intent is that data stays in the jurisdiction it was collected
in — Canadian positions on Canadian infrastructure — and the design routes it that way.
No residency guarantee will be claimed until there is a contract behind it. If that
matters to a team, it is one of the first things to settle rather than something to take on
trust from a web page.
At rest
Free text a hiker writes — the trip plan, the note about themselves —
is intended to be encrypted per record, with the keys held apart from the database, so that a
stolen copy of the database is not a copy of everyone's private circumstances. Positions stay
queryable so that an area search still works. Access is by sign-in and area, with no key for a
team to install or lose. Designed, not yet built.
In transit
HTTPS only, with the app pinned to its own server. A position is a
few hundred bytes, so nothing is batched up in the clear waiting for a better
connection.
6.Where the concept stands
The app and the console are built and working; the screenshots above
are of the real thing. The hosted service they would run on is not: today it is a single
server suitable for a pilot, the console sign-in is a development placeholder, and encryption
at rest is designed but unwritten. The public site is a concept preview and is not
live.
Saying that is better than showing a page that implies otherwise.
If a team is interested, the first conversation is about what would have to be true before
they would put real callouts near it.
What would have to happen next
Hosting
Move off the single box onto managed infrastructure
in a named Canadian region, with a contract that says so.
Sign-in
Replace the placeholder with real single sign-on against a team's own
Google or Microsoft domain.
Encryption
Build the per-record encryption of free text that the table above
describes.
One team
A pilot with a single team and a handful of signs, on ground they
already know, with no expectation that anybody looks at it.
SAR Helper is free, carries no advertising, and collects
nothing it does not show. In an emergency, call 911 — this system cannot.
