Computer software written by a member of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Rescue Squad played an important role in helping searchers find an autistic man who wandered off from a camp for developmentally disabled adults. Lt. Rick Slatten’s program, called Search Tracker, used the laws of probability to guide searchers who found Keith Kennedy late Sunday about a mile from the Trade Lake Camp in Grantsburg, Wis. He had been missing for seven days.

Kennedy was recovering Tuesday at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, in Minneapolis. A spokeswoman said he was in critical but stable condition.

Search Tracker breaks a search area into smaller units, analyzes terrain, vegetation cover, what searchers have done and recommends which units need to be searched more.

“It really helped because all the indicators were pointing to the general area where he was eventually found,” Burnett County (Wis.) Sheriff Dean Roland said. “It’s like a compass — you have to trust that compass, you have to trust what this program is telling you. When the mathematical numbers say that’s the best place to go, you go.”

When the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Rescue Squad helped with the search last Thursday and Friday, Slatten brought Search Tracker with him. The rescue squad has used Search Tracker for about three years.

Slatten begin tinkering with the program after 5-year-old LeeAnna Warner went missing in Chisholm in 2003. His efforts became more focused after he attended search training in Virginia several months later.

“The national school really gave me the knowledge I needed to run with it,” he said.

The school gave students software used to train searchers.

“There were two things wrong with (that software),” Slatten said. “One, it crashed all the time. And two, it was never designed to run a search; it was designed to train you how to run a search. It tried to outthink you.”

Slatten said it was also missing some important features — like the forest types found in northeastern Minnesota.

“This software has really worked well for us,” Rescue Squad Capt. Tom Crossmon said. “It was instrumental in this case. The program just screamed for us to get in and search the area were Keith was found. So we put canine resources in there, which give us better indications where to search.”

A St. Paul firefighter found Kennedy next to a creek bed on swampy ground Sunday evening. Searchers had passed by the area at least twice, but dense brush hampered the search.

“That general area was searched a lot, because that was what the probability was saying,” Roland said.

Slatten is happy, but not surprised, that Search Tracker helped find Kennedy.

“It uses search theory principles that have been proven,” he said. “History is full of examples where these techniques have been used to find the unfindable.”

Search Tracker has been through several revisions as Slatten continues to improve it. He and his wife are now working to make it more user-friendly.

“If it ever gets to where I’m comfortable sharing it with the world I’ll put it on the Internet for free,” Slatten said. “I don’t want to make any money at it — I would be happy if folks search correctly.”

Posted by Zoov on 26 Jun 2008 06:56 am
Filed Under: Health, Sci-Tech |