Modelling Maritime SAR Effective Sweep Widths for Helicopters in VDM

Abstract

Search and Rescue (SAR) is searching for and providing help to people in danger. In the UK, SAR teams are typically charities with limited resources, and SAR missions are time critical. Search managers need to objectively decide which search assets (e.g. helicopter vs drone) would be better. A key metric in the SAR community is effective sweep width (W), which provides a single measure for a search asset's ability to detect a specific object in specific environmental conditions. Tables of W for different search assets are provided in various manuals, such as the International Aeronautical and Maritime SAR (IAMSAR) Manual. However, these tables take years of expensive testing and experience to produce, and no such tables exist for drones. This paper uses the Vienna Development Method (VDM) to build an initial model of W for a known case (helicopters at sea) with a view to predicting W tables for drones. The model computes W for various search object sizes, helicopter altitude and visibility. The results for the model are quite different from the published tables, which shows that the abstraction level is not yet correct, however it produced useful insights and directions for the next steps.