Rescue dog in action

Locus Map helps with searching for lost people

Michal, Locus team

Search&Rescue support program

Over the years of Locus Map’s history, a lot of times our users wrote to us about Locus Map being helpful to teams of professionals, maintaining peoples’ security and health – police, firefighters, rescuers, searchers… Therefore, about a year ago, our team has resolved to provide free licenses for a full-featured outdoor navigation application Locus Map Pro to members of such teams across the world. Teams can get:

  • free licenses for full-featured Locus Map Pro mobile GPS software for all active members of the organization
  • free LoMaps of the organisation‘s operation area

Licences and free subscriptions are provided on the base of an application form filled and sent to us at pr(at)asamm.com.

A sample of good practice

Peter Král is a member of  The Bratislava Cynology Rescue Brigade . He pointed out the possibilities of using our application to search for missing persons. Peter, in his demanding job, is engaged in a quest for searching, planning, preparing and managing rescue teams during field searches.

How did you get to Locus?

For a long time, we’ve been testing various programs and applications to help us with preparation, navigation, and orientation in terrain. There were problems not only with the inadequacy of these programs but also with their technical and user demands. For fieldwork, we needed a simple application that, after a short training, could be handled by a technically less savvy personnel.

Rescue dog in action

Which Locus features do you use?

In the field, we mainly use the features to identify the sectors to be searched – simple determination of the size of the covered area, management of the sectors and their export to GPS or other devices, control of movement in these sectors, online tracking of the search teams, and afterward we evaluate the search action from the data collected in Locus. We also use geocaching tools to simply sketch the radius from a given point (which in this case can be the last place where a missing person has been seen or where the subject’s personal belongings have been found).

Rescue dog in action

What are Locus’s greatest benefits for you?

For the search teams themselves, it is a great advantage to change map data and find the best map for the site with the best possible coverage. This advantage can also be used by the commander when he can draw information from various map data and thus identify the potential places where the person can be found (cabins, view towers, caves, buildings, etc.)

What do you miss in Locus?

The great advantage of Locus, which we are currently testing, is online tracking of search teams with Live tracking feature. By testing, we have only identified two limiting factors for online tracking: 1. dependence on data connection that is sometimes variable in the mountain areas, or 2. impossibility to record motion of the tracked search teams (this feature would allow the commander to immediately evaluate which checkpoints were checked by the team without need to return to the base). However, compared to other systems, Live tracking is free and user-friendly (3 steps in the main menu).

Mapping of search teams coverage of the area
Mapping of search teams coverage of the area

So overall, are you satisfied with Locus?

Overall, Locus meets all of our requirements. Working with it is simple, fast and straightforward, which is reflected in a quite rapid expansion among other cynologists-rescuers.

More on the Bratislava Cynology Rescue Brigade website.

17 Comments

  1. Jörg
    28. 4. 2017

    Wenn er das GSPIES System näme, hätte er einme Aufzeichnung der zurückgelegten Strecke. Aktuell haben die aber Schwierigkeiten. Habe mit dem Entwickler bereits Kontakt aufgenommen. Wenn der Programmierer aus dem Urlaub wieder da ist, wird das System wieder funktionieren

  2. Mara
    29. 4. 2017

    Zdravím,
    Pokud by jste chtěli vidět online aktuální polohu i prošlou trasu a taky si barevně rozlišit jednotlivé účastníky tak můžete zkusit tohle https://help.locusmap.eu/topic/livetracking-kml-networklink

    • Peter Kral
      8. 5. 2017

      Dobry den
      Dakujem za info. Preposlal som nasmu IT specialistovi, ja som sa stratil a obavam sa, ze ma ani locus nenajde ?.

      • Mara
        10. 5. 2017

        Dobrý den,
        pokud budete chtít tak mi napište na mail mara.livetrack@gmail.com a pomůžu vám s nastavením není to nic složitého.

  3. herbert winkler
    30. 4. 2017

    Super !

  4. Luther Peebles
    30. 4. 2017

    It would be very helpful if Peter or someone would put together a tutorial outlining the complete use of locus and search and rescue

    • Locus team
      3. 5. 2017

      Please contact Peter directly if you are interested - peto.kral@gmail.com

    • Peter Kral
      8. 5. 2017

      Hello
      We have tutorial. Send me a mail and i can send the tutorial.
      Peter Kral

      • baz khan
        27. 5. 2017

        Sir kindly send me the tutorial as well
        My e mail address is
        baz.khan7@gmail.com
        Regards

      • Jörg
        4. 6. 2017

        Hey,
        please sen me your tutorial, i am from the german red cross and we will use locusmap for us.

        best regards
        Jörg

        • Locus team
          5. 6. 2017

          Hi Jörg, the tutorial is available online at docs.locusmap.eu. If you need any help, please contact us at help.locusmap.eu.

      • iulian
        9. 2. 2020

        hello Peter, plese, send me the tutorial too, I like locus and I need learn'it completely because I use'it many times. thank you very much!

      • Алексей Куликов
        19. 4. 2020

        Добрый день Питер. Будет очень любезно, если вы отправите и мне учебник пользования программой. Я геодезист, и в своей деятельности часто приходится прибегать к нестандартным решениям и пользованию программ ускоряющих рабочий процесс.

  5. Leif
    15. 5. 2017

    Nice!

  6. Przemo
    11. 2. 2020

    Locus is my favourote maps app but If I could expect more ... 3D visualization of the tarain or mountains like as I good rememmber in OruxMaps.

  7. Uwe
    13. 2. 2020

    Bin zur Zeit zufrieden... Habe noch nicht alles getestet aber dafür ist es auch zu komplex... Aber bis jetzt ist es für mich bereits besser als erwartet... Danke

  8. Axel Berg
    7. 4. 2021

    Hallo,

    die Funktion eine Nachricht inklusive Standortdaten abzusetzen, wenn man eine definierte Zeit nicht in Bewegung ist, wie es die App Move Tracker macht, ist für Leute, die alleine outdooren genial, vielleicht könntet Ihr soetwas auch in Locus integrieren.

    Grüße, Axel

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