After several years of messing around I have finally decided – with much prompting and encouragement from others – to get around to studying missing person behaviour within the lowland search environment.

ALSAR and LSDog teams deal with only a tiny fraction of all missing persons and indeed deal with only a small fraction of the types of misper that the majority of SAR teams deal with. The majority of lowland search callouts are for Despondents, Mispers with Dementia and Mispers with Mental Health Issues of one form or another. Likewise, the search environment is often very different – much more urban and sub-urban searches – very few wilderness searches!

As such the value of any data collected by these lowland search teams would be invaluable – to them and to the police who in the UK have the statutory duty for missing persons. Collection of such data has, in the past, been problematic. I have, therefore, recruited some volunteers who have indicated a willingness to collate such data.

As a pilot, I have asked these volunteers to do a retrospective look at their 2009 callout data. This will allow for a thorough testing of the form, and give them an idea of what data needs to be calculated/kept for future searches.

The form itself is based upon the ISRID form, and indeed any data collected will be shared with ISRID. However, several suggestions have also been incorporated into the form. These include tracking all types of callout – not just misper searches; multiple misper categories - often it is difficult to place them in one category; more detailed terrain and find location boxes and so on.

The form was put in an excel format – to allow collation of all the data from the year, and for ease of recording. Initial reports suggest it works, although the form is quite complex.

I will, of course, be sharing any data collected freely.

If you are interested in the study, or wish to collect data from you team, you can either download the excel form –  ALSAR Stats Form, or contact me for more information.