'Morse' may be answer to keeping track

The setting up of a standardised trip intention system across New Zealand, to save lives and cut the cost of searches, is being investigated. Felicity Wolfe reports.

After packing a locator beacon and appropriate gear, the internet may be one of the new essentials for trampers, boat users and mountaineers as outdoor safety enters the information age.

Over the past six months, a team of Mountain Safety Council, Land Search and Rescue, police, Department of Conservation and Tourism New Zealand representatives have been considering several electronic options for a new standardised trip intention system across New Zealand.

Bruce Rapley, a Palmerston North-based consultant, could have the answer.

He told the Otago Daily Times he had been working on an updatable web-based intentions system for trampers and boat users over the past 18 months and presented his system to the group earlier this month.

He believes the system, named Making Outdoor Recreation Safe and Enjoyable (Morse), would be an option which would especially appeal to younger generations venturing into the outdoors.

Mr Rapley decided to create it after reading about a man who drowned while waiting for rescue after the boat he was in sank.

"The coroner found many things wrong... with the search and rescue," Mr Rapley said.

One of the problems had been that although an intention form had been logged, the level of information available was insufficient to pinpoint where the boat might have been.

"It occurred to me a solution may be creating a dynamic register of people going out fishing, skiing, tramping or whatever in the outdoors," Mr Rapley said.

In conjunction with a group of Victoria University information management students, he created a web system which gathers information from people before they leave home.

One problem identified by Doc was that up to 20% of paper-based intentions forms were not completed on people's return, causing staff hundreds of lost hours chasing up trampers' whereabouts each year.

With Morse, the system would try to contact the person and then the emergency contacts when people did not register their return.

Once a negative response had been logged, Morse could also ask others in the area to keep an eye out for an overdue person and then police and LandSAR, Mr Rapley said.

By reaching the person involved and their emergency contacts automatically, the system would save a lot of man hours each year.

Having got the basic structure together, the students were now looking at incorporating weather information which could either decrease or increase the level of alarm and build in some flexibility.

Cellphone updating might another feature which could be built in.

He was keen to trial Morse around Wakatipu this summer and said if the inter-agency group did not take up the system he would continue to develop it at his company's expense.

In the long term, it would take a much larger investment and he hoped the group would adopt take his idea.

Mountain Safety Council manager Steven Schreiber said Mr Rapley's system was one of several he and others looking at the issue had investigated recently.

It was a priority and had government support, as the cost of searches "whether legitimate or not is an issue", he said.

Mr Schreiber said the nationwide project was very "complex" and while it was possible Morse could be trialled over the summer, no decision had been made yet.

A large number of the people involved were not New Zealanders and getting the message through to them would also have to be addressed.