Contextual geotracking service of incident markers in disaster search-and-rescue operations

Real-time geovisualization of disaster scenes provides visual situational awareness, which could decrease medical triage time, and also allows first responders to better allocate relief resources. In this paper, we describe a novel contextual geotracking service that provides spatiotemporal visualization of response history through the use of mobile devices and a wireless mesh network. During crisis response, with limited resources in a high-stress disaster relief environment, contextual data visualization of disaster incident scene status markers, and their presentation in a usable dashboard is crucial. We present novel visualization tools that we have developed to integrate custom map markers, tracking information collected through a wireless network, geovisualization over time through gradients, and spatiotemporal event filters. We evaluate our geotracking service in a field trial with a search-and-rescue task force comprising of professional first responders.We show effectiveness of our service in terms of data entry time, usability survey, and qualitative feedback within a disaster response simulation experiment.