What’s Ahead for Search and Rescue Users
Search and rescue (SAR) has always been at the heart of CalTopo. Read on to hear from CalTopo founder Matt Jacobs about exciting upcoming improvements that we have planned for SAR users.
CalTopo’s origins date back to one of my first searches in 2009, and the mapping difficulties I encountered on it. While both the product and the company have taken a winding path from then to now, search and rescue has always been a core focus and it’s been a privilege to see our tools help redefine the standard of care in SAR, from remote planning to live tracking.
Early on, I built the product around practices then common in the Northern California SAR community, primarily a set of forms developed in the late 90s by the Bay Area Search and Rescue Council (BASARC). A desire to produce paper copies of these forms – primarily the “SAR 104” assignment form and “SAR 135” clue report – drove the fields currently available on CalTopo’s assignment and clue objects.
While search management has evolved since then, these objects have remained largely unchanged within CalTopo. In general we’ve tried hard to ensure backwards compatibility with existing workflows, only breaking them when absolutely necessary. However 2025 is bringing some major changes to the app, and for better or worse, making that omelette is going to mean breaking a few eggs.
One of the big changes I’ve noticed in SAR since the introduction of our mobile app is the tightening of information sharing and decision making loops: assignments are drawn on the fly for field redeployments, photos of clues are sent back for instant evaluation, and teams are debriefed on a screen without waiting for a printed map of their downloaded tracks. While I’m not ready to fully disclose our forthcoming changes, one major theme is to continue this trajectory of faster decision cycles by moving closer to a paperless search.
As one example, we’d like to allow teams to capture debriefing information directly within a map. Adding debriefs, and in particular allowing them to be linked to specific assignments, would stretch our single-level folder UI even further than it already is. But adding nested folder support atop a foundation where an assignment’s visibility is determined by not only its folder but also its operational period, is trickier than it might initially sound. While being mindful of the need to visually group assignments by OP, the only way we can reasonably get you nested folders is by making an object’s visibility depend only on its parent folder.
As another example, most of an assignment’s fields are only visible during editing. Update-only users – the permission level we recommend for most searchers – cannot edit these objects, and currently must get this data from paper documentation. Adding object details dialogs alongside our current edit dialogs would solve this problem, and that is just one of several tasks that would be made easier if all objects, including assignments, had a single title field instead of the current dual number/letter fields.
What this means for SAR objects is that over the next few months, we plan to make the following changes:
- Assignments will have a color property, as with standard lines and polygons. Assignments will initially display in this color, although users can still choose to color by operational period.
- Assignment number and letter will be consolidated into a single title property, as with our other object types.
- Visibility will no longer cascade from operational periods to assignments, or from assignments to clues. That is, unchecking an operational period in the left bar will not hide its assignments.
- When you click on an assignment, the “print individual map” and “print SAR 104” options will no longer appear; they will remain available in bulk ops for a period of time but will eventually be removed.
- The “child objects” dialog for operational periods and assignments will be removed. You could previously get at this dialog by clicking on an operational period in the left bar, or by clicking on an assignment on the map, then “Deprecated SAR Options”.
- Assignment-linked tracks and waypoints will be fully deprecated. These were an obscure feature unknown to most users that allowed you to link lines and markers to specific assignments. While already-saved objects will remain visible, they will no longer inherit color and visibility from their parent assignment, and you will not be able to add new ones.
The following changes are also planned, but will likely take place later, and only once we feel that new functionality is in place to help ease the transition:
- Modification of the properties available on assignments and clues. For example, the responsive, unresponsive and clue PODs will likely be consolidated into a single property.
- Removal of some paper-based workflow tasks, such as individual assignment maps, “104 (Assignment)” forms and “SAR 135” clue forms.
- Removal of the ability to color assignments by operational period, status and other attributes via the “display settings” control within the assignments folder.
I’m incredibly proud of the impact we’ve had since SARTopo’s launch in 2013, and look forward to many future years as an independent, mission-driven organization unencumbered from the needs of a larger corporate parent. I realize these changes will be disruptive to some of our users with established workflows, but they are necessary to support some really exciting work going on behind the scenes. And since we’re already peeling back that curtain a bit, yes, that does include allowing you to see which team member created an object.
Matt Jacobs
Founder, CalTopo
Great Job Matt – feel free to reach out for an East Coast Perspective. Cole Brown
Mr. Jacobs, the CalTopo app that you have created is an amazing app. In Tennessee, more and more of our Civil Air Patrol members are using the CalTopo app. It is the ideal bridge between air crew and ground crew, allowing people from both worlds, (both FAA sectional and ground topo maps,) to be able to use a common language. We are currently having to keep “Fltplan Go” app on our phones, because we are required to have access to the CAP grid map. If at sometime in the future, you decide to add the CAP grids, your app would serve our needs perfectly. Regardless, CalTopo is a fantastic tool and is making our search and rescue exercises and missions more effective. Thank you!
It wouldn’t surprise me if it could be added in as a custom data source or shapefile. Then it’s just another layer you can add when wanted.
I could see this being added in via WMS or another overlay. (Shapefile, KML) It then becomes another layer that can be selected as needed. It looks like Chartbundle used to have the CAP grid as a WMS before the company went under. Maybe someone in the forum has already solved this problem.
It looks like a bunch o great upgrades. Please keep the printable 104 forms though. While its great have access to the assignment info online, we use the 104s to sign teams out on assignments to keep track of who is on each team.
We’ll likely vary the structure of the 104S (for example the mini-map was more relevant in the handheld GPS days) but it would be a long time before we might remove the concept entirely, and if we did, we would couple that with an alternative like making it easy to export and print a spreadsheet of assignment info. Have our eyes set more on the BASARC 104 and other fillable PDF forms.
Mr. Jacobs,
On behalf of my SAR Group, I’d like to thank you for this terrific, user-friendly program. Having begun with paper topos, Ozi Explorer, Google Earth, Garmin Base Camp and ARC GIS over the years, this tool has immensely reduced our response times and situation awareness, not only in the ICP, but also for the field teams. Looking forward to future improvements! Thank you!
Thanks, always good to hear.
Having used CalTopo from the early days (circa 2012), I am excited to see the app + desktop development evolve alongside the ever present trend to improve SAR planning and management. In many ways, CalTopo provides the scaffolding for this evolution to occur. Not only has digital mapping become mainstream, but the live feedback between data collection in the field and the planning process in the command post has become much more robust and relevant to quick outcomes. I will admit that I still have several items on my “wish list” of features, yet thrilled to see the changes soon to take shape!
Great job Matt. For anyone in SAR who needs comprehensive paper or electronic form based ICS documentation to go with your maps, check out https://sarassist.ca
This FREE application is purpose built by and for SAR Professionals and works hand in hand with CalTopo.
SARAssist is an Incident Management application. It can be used as a single or multiuser application, synchronized across a local network or the internet.
My apologies with an earlier post I made regarding SARAssist. In no way did I mean to take away from what CALTopo brings to the SAR management table. In fact, CALTopo is a foundational component of our success. We graphically design our task assignments in CALTopo, using as many data fields as possible. We then export that data to SARAssist to generate printed task assignments and other reports. This approach helps us to create more detailed and consistent maps while accelerating our other documentation processes. It eliminates a great deal of duplicate data entry and gives our reports more consistent detail . The CALTopo forms are excellent, especially when we need to get a team out the door quickly. CALTopo is an essential tool in our kit for SAR in BC. Being able to track our teams in real time is a game changer. In our jurisdiction we are required to have a great deal of documentation, in addition to detailed maps. This makes SARAssist a great companion to work in conjunction with CALTopo. One area I am exploring is how to get Canadian navigational data for inland waterways into CALTopo. It would be very helpful when planning sonar searches or search routes for our watercraft. This assignment information could then be uploaded into the nav systems of our boat and Sea Doos to improve search area coverage.
We are very grateful for all that you and your team have done, and continue to do, and we are eagerly looking forward to new things to come.
No problem John. We’ve long struggled with the tradeoff between mapping features vs non-geospatial data management. Obviously printed paperwork is not our focus and I’m happy to have others working on that and not offended by you bringing it up.
If you find a source for inland waterway data that we can use (generally meaning public domain or openly licensed), let us know.
It would be great if you wanted to share this on our forum! We are encouraging people to post useful tools there, and if we can collect several we might make a section in our user guide to make them more available. https://help.caltopo.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/34422533628315-CalTopo-First-Response-Teams-Resources-to-share
Hi Matt,
Just curious what SAR unit you serve(d) with. I’m with Siskiyou County SAR, but I used to be with Alameda County for many years before I moved north. I’m very active up here — currently the only drone pilot in the county. I’m also very interested in the pending changes you discussed.