Circular areas to help save lives and find the missing
My name is John May,Chief of Wolfe County Search & Rescue. We would like to see if it's possible to add an option to draw a circular area. This would be extremely useful to SAR teams. We use case studies to determine how far a lost person may travel and a circular area is then drawn showing the most probable areas for the subject to still be within so containment can be initiated. Having the distance of the circular in miles/km along with acres would be awesome. Hopefully this is something that can be incorporated in future revisions. Thanks for a great product and we continually share Gaia with our fellow SAR teams
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I definitely see the benefit. A circular search area is critical for lost person situations. Having that capability would greatly help rescuers stay within those set boundaries which grow larger as time passes. With Gaia searchers can also be updated instantly if the search area changes.
On a separate note I could see potential for it to be used for tracking during hunting. Either estimating the range of a species or blood trailing an injured one.
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I agree with this request. There are a number of applications, especially in a SAR environment, in which this could be useful. Being able to define a search area based on an area of probability that a subject may be located in would be quite helpful. Not only this, but there are non SAR applications as well. For example, say an area has restrictions on how far you must be from roads, trails and streams to camp. Being able to define a circular radius around your proposed campsite would be an easy way to do this.
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I have been asked to comment here, based on my post in the General Discussion...
I hope that my request here is distroed across all platforms. I certainly want to see it on 'Droid and the desktop, not just iOS.
Range rings show a set of concentric circles labeled by distance from a central point, sometimes with radial lines, for judging distance and angle from a geographic location. Keywords: Range rings, radius circles, circles of distance
My DeLorme GPS has these. Garmin doesn't appear to. A quick web search will turn up so many hits that I think the message is clear. Range rings are SO much more useful than scaling lines on a map device. While they are useful on a paper map because you can't draw and erase circles all over your map, there is no excuse for not having them on an electronic device.
Even with paper, during search and rescue (S&R), we will draw them on maps, knowing that the maps will be tossed at the end of the event.
For groundwork, I find the radial lines useful. For cycling and driving, not so much. Toggling either on|off would be useful.
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I will add, that from a recreational standpoint, it would be nice as well. I agree with the distance from camp idea mentioned earlier, and it would be helpful when planning trips. Say I want to plan a trip , but only have a limited amount of time, and want to see what is in a certain drive distance to maximize the adventure, and minimize the amount of time the kids are bored in the car.
Or if you and friends want to plan together, overlapping circles to split the difference allows a smaller search area for what to do.
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Over a decade ago, my first iphone gps app had ranging circles and it was free. They worked perfectly. As a hunter, I could sit in my spot, look at the ranging circles as I zoomed, and say "well, that's an easy 80 yrd shot there, a harder 200 yrd shot there, and a house at 400 yards there, so no shooting in that direction". Also the quickest way to find out how much farther you have to go.
I really liked that feature...
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I'm shocked that this hasn't been implemented yet. I found this post while searching how to do it. For me, I would use it on Gaia to plot my theoretical flight areas for my drone. For instance, I put a 4.3-mile circle around a point of interest and know where I need to be to film it, or I put a 4.3-mile circle on me and know what I can go look at.
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For those who have been waiting more than four years for Gaia to add Range Rings or circles... I'm sure you already discovered this, but sartopo.com and caltopo.com of course both have Range Rings available ... and have for many years.
I loved Gaia for so many years, but their development of some of the base level tools we needed... just never moved forward: so I had to abandon it. I still have Gaia on my phone of course, it is even on my primary home screen, and love a lot about the app and interface, but for actual work... I'm in SARTopo all the time now.
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Dan Dawson, thnx for suggesting other sources of distance rings. Looking at Caltopo now, as a guest without an account. So you can enter range rings at set distances, initially one, or multiple rings with radii separated by commas. So, you have to type that in, and go the right zoom for them to be visible.
On the antique software I referenced, the rings are always visible at all zooms, automatically adjusting to scale as the map is enlarged or reduced. So, like, on Caltopo (as it looks to me), to put in rings at 100 yrd increments, you'd have to type in 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and do enter. On my antique software, you would just turn on the rings, then zoom in until the increment between rings became 100 yrds. I think this is preferable, because within a single stream of thought you might be looking at different parameters. For example, if I'm setting up a new treestand for deer hunting, first question is what are reasonable archery shots? So you look at your 20 and 30 yrd rings, and where they intersect landmarks, and say yeah, I'll use the 20 yrd pin if he's near that sycamore, or the 25 yrd pin if he's at the creek, but if he's near that holly tree, he's out of range. Then, continuing your analysis, you'll zoom out to check rifle ranges. Like out to 300 yrds. Then you'll be saying ooh that would be an easy shot but I need to prune that tree branch. On this side the boundary line is only 150 yrd away, so need to restrict shots. That rock cliff is at 300 and absolutely my max shot. If he's above that, I'll just hope he moves closer. Then I would zoom out even more, to see the nearest houses, and eliminate more shooting paths due to pass-through and carry-on risk. Zooming out even further will show general land characteristics that will influence wild game behaviour. So in 5 minutes I've used 3 significantly different ranges. On the antique app, the range change is automatic. On Caltopo, if I understand correctly, I'd have to type in each of those ranges. So I'm saying I would rather hit one button, the circle button, to get the rings, and click the button again to get rid of them, rather than typing in each range with commas between. keystroke reduction strategy.
Not trying to start a war here. Just thinking about what we're asking the developers to do. Hate to see a fancy new feature added that suits some requestors, while others are nonplussed. Hopefully implement a solution that most are enamored with.
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Thanks persiman243, great question. This thread is primarilly about range rings for Search and Rescue use. You have a center point, such as the subjects last known location, and place rings at specific statistically significant distances of where that subject will likely be. Your use of range rings is a separate common use (often for navigation or hunting/shooting use as you state). If you our stationary, the SAR range rings would work, if you are mobile, that is a separate feature request. I see those rings mostly on navigation apps (aviation, sailing, etc.)
As you’ve seen, most “professional” or SAR users gave up on hope with Gaia and have transitioned to SARTopo/CalTopo.
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Thanks for the discussion. Interesting stuff. I'm really good at math, but not in the SAR arena. I don't quite see the difference in stationary/mobile. The distance rings I've seen were centered on any point of interest, not necessarily the GPS unit itself. That wasn't clear from my examples of actively putting the rings around my immediate location, in my example. So, yeah, you could sit in the office and make rings around point A, and then go out in the field and navigate within or without of the rings. And cohorts likewise.
If I'm hearing correctly, the ring spacing needs are indeed different. Like, clearly, if you want to have rings around the last known position of 1 sq mile, 2 sq mile, and 3 sq mile, you would enter radii of 992 yrd, 1404 yrd, and 1720 yrd. That's not linear, but you can enter them on SAR/Cal Topo. And, as you zoom in or out, the circles stay at the same place on the geography. Like, the 2 mile ring intersects the church annex, no matter how you zoom. So you can allocate staff within each range, as needed, and boundaries are clear.
By comparison, I'm liking my old software that I keep referring to, where the rings are equally spaced, and the spacing varies as you zoom so you always see so many rings, but they could be 1 mile between each ring, or 1000 yards, or 200 yards, or 100 yards, or 30 yards, changing as you zoom. So as you zoom, the ring position on the geography is going to change. You (I) may indeed have a ring intersecting the church annex sometimes, but if you (I) zoom in a little to change the detail, suddenly the ring spacing changes and none are over the church annex. Frame of reference not useful, especially in coordination with others.
Even if our needs are different, I wish Gaia could have made at least 1 group happy. I could easily use the SARCal solution. I wouldn't like the manual radii entry, but 'twould only be once for a setting. Like, 5 extra seconds, right? Still be better than no rings at all. We'll wait and see if Gaia implements either or both in the future.
Happy Hunting!
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> The distance rings I've seen were centered on any point of interest,
> not necessarily the GPS unit itself.My apologies, I thought you were seeking range rings centered on your present location, and those rings would adjust based on your zoom level displayed, thus my answer was for that type of range rings.
> Like, clearly, if you want to have rings around the last known position
> of 1 sq mile, 2 sq mile, and 3 sq mile
We don't use square miles when make rings, we use the radius, so if I wanted range rings at 1, 2 and 3 miles from the Last Known Position (LKP) I simple create a range ring and enter "1,2,3" in the distance box, and all three get created.
And yes, as I zoom in and out, those rings stay centered on the LKP and are always 1, 2, and 3 miles.
> By comparison, I'm liking my old software that I keep referring to,
> where the rings are equally spaced, and the spacing varies as
> you zoom so you always see so many ringsThis is not possible in Gaia (since they don't support rings at all) and not possible in CalTopo/SARTopo since their rings are fixed in size based on a point on the map. They stay where they are as you zoom in or out. In SARTopo/CalTopo you can easily make as many rings as you want, so it would likely satisfy your needs, but they won't add/remove rings or modify their scale based on your screen zoom level.
As I mentioned, I know of other applications, primarily navigation apps for aircraft and boats, that do allow rings based on GPS position of the ship/aircraft, and they do vary based on the zoom level. As in, if I zoom all the way out it might be showing 10, 25 and 50 mile rings, but if I zoom way in close it would be showing 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 mile rings, etc. In ForeFlight, they call these Distance Rings, and in this video you can see how those work and how zoom changes the scale of the rings. Not that this app is useful to you, but just to share an idea of how other apps implement that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR5iVESt4DQHope that helps!
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