Protecting the protectors

The device has GPS sensitivity comparable to a high-end consumer GPS receiver, so it might not get a fix indoors, underground, in a vehicle, or in an area that is very heavily wooded or surrounded by very tall hardened buildings. If the user does not have a GPS fix, the device still will send location reports, but it sends its last known location and flags the report as "invalid" to let the dispatcher know that the rescuer may have moved since the last location fix. Location reports from the microphones were monitored from a mobile command center at a central location within Isla Vista, with SAR members serving as dispatchers. They easily could identify from these reports the location of each team, which made it possible for them to quickly dispatch the closest team to an incident. "We were primarily interested in the GPSMICs for safety reasons" [Nelson Trichler] said. "But knowing where everyone was also made it possible for us to deploy faster and more efficiently." Santa Barbara County's SAR chose Mytopo's Terrain Navigator Pro because its Team Tracker module supports Pryme's GPS speaker microphone and it has features that are uniquely suited for search-and-rescue users, including U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps, which are required when sending team members into craggy areas with sheer cliffs and other impassible features.