Rescue team in action
ResQU AB brings a completely new tool to search for missing persons or people in emergency situations, the Hepkie mobile phone locating system. Hepkie finds people that are lost, on land or at sea, or stuck in avalanches, earthquakes and fires.
This can today only be done through Mobile Phone Tracking with an accuracy of approximately 100 meters. In optimal conditions, that is, in for instance urban areas. The Hepkie system can locate a phone with an accuracy of approximately 30 cm.
Rescue operation drill
Where someone is lost where there is no cellular network coverage the situation is much more difficult. If the person is somewhere in the wilderness or in radio shadow where there is no coverage, the phone is lost from the network and the phone is nowhere to be found by traditional means of mobile tracking. If the person is buried under snow, knowing were the persons’ location within one hundred meters is of little use.
Helicopter based SAR
The Hepkie locating system from ResQU AB turns any standard GSM mobile phone in to a rescue beacon. No new software or hardware is required. Just any normal phone. A helicopter equipped with Hepkie can search an area of 50 times 60 km per hour. And it is independent of operator or mobile network connection. Furthermore the identities of victims or their phone numbers are not required when using the Hepkie system.
Avalanche dog training. Photo by Alex Kerney.
Also the precision from traditional mobile phone tracking cannot be compared with the precision of the Hepkie system. Field trials with the Swedish Mountain Rescue in the ski resort of Åre in Sweden shows that Hepkie can locate a mobile phone on a 6 km distance and also locate one buried 180 cm in snow, in both cases with a precision better than 30 cm. This makes it a powerful tool for locating mobile phones in many different types of emergency situations, from a couple of hundred meters to well over 10 kilometers. The system is ideal to locate people buried under snow from an avalanche or collapsed buildings in the wake of earthquakes and hurricanes.