SAR mission management: one shared picture, from callout to close

Most search operations are not lost for lack of people or effort. They get harder because the information is scattered: team positions in the radio operator’s notebook, sector assignments on a whiteboard in the base vehicle, the roster in a group chat, the gear list in a spreadsheet that somebody forgot to update. Each tool works on its own. None of them tells the coordinator, at 03:00, the one thing they need to know — who is where, doing what, and what has already been covered.

Mission management in Redoto Rescue exists to close that gap. It is the part of our search and rescue software where a callout becomes a structured operation, and where everything that happens during it lands in one place, in order, with a time next to it.

01The mission lifecycle: create, activate, track, close

Every mission moves through the same four states. That sounds bureaucratic until you have run an operation where nobody could say whether a callout was still live, or which teams were still standing by for a search that ended two hours ago.

Create

Open the mission as soon as the call comes in: type, priority, the missing person or persons, and the last-seen point. A planned mission can exist before anyone is deployed, which is exactly what you want while you are still taking the intake.

Activate

Activation is the moment the operation is real. Rescuers on duty in an active mission can share their GPS position from the field app, and alerts go to the people the callout concerns.

Track

While the mission is active the workspace is the operation: teams moving on the map, sectors filling with coverage, located persons and clues marked, and every event written to the log as it happens.

Close

Location sharing is tied to an active mission, so closing it ends the on-duty picture. The timeline, tracks and event log become the basis of the after-action report instead of something reconstructed from memory.

The mission list shows every callout with its status, priority, missing-person count, weather and risks, alongside a live map of all active mission zones. When two operations run at once in different regions, you see both without switching tools.

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02Inside the mission workspace

The mission workspace is one screen per operation. It is designed around the questions a coordinator gets asked most often, so the answers are on the screen rather than in someone’s head.

• Teams — tactical teams with their leaders and callsigns, each with live position and phone battery while on duty. See live GPS tracking for how positions and tracks are recorded.
• Search sectors — drawn on the map, assigned to teams and carrying a coverage figure, so the second-pass decision is based on data. The search sectors feature covers this in depth.
• Located persons and last-seen points — each with a search radius around it, and a found status once the person is located.
• Base locations — the command post, rendezvous and staging points, visible to every team on the same map.
• Event log — timestamped entries for what happened, when and in what order, readable by the next shift without a handover speech.

Maps can be switched between topographic and satellite layers, and imported GPX routes can be shown alongside the recorded tracks of your teams. Rescuers in the field see the same sectors, teammates, bases and last-seen points in the mobile app, so the picture in the base and the picture on the hill do not drift apart.

03Why one shared picture beats whiteboards and radio logs

A whiteboard is fast, visible and familiar. It is also in one place, readable only by the people standing in front of it, and wiped when the operation moves. A radio log is accurate but linear: finding out when sector 3 was reassigned means reading it back from the start. A spreadsheet holds the roster until two people edit it at once.

The equipment row matters more than people expect. Loans in Redoto Rescue can be recorded against the mission they were issued for, so the kit that went out with a team is part of the same record. The equipment management page explains how that works.

04Mission chat, broadcasts and notifications

Radio remains the backbone of field communication, and it should. But a lot of operational traffic does not need a radio channel: a description of a clue, the new rendezvous point, a reminder that the operational period ends at 18:00. Each mission has its own chat channel for that traffic, and coordinators can send broadcasts that reach every team in the mission at once.

Push notifications carry callouts, weather warnings, low stock and overdue equipment to the people they concern, not to the whole organization. Because the channel belongs to the mission, the conversation is part of the operation’s record rather than buried in a personal group chat.

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05Roles, accountability and incident command practice

Access is role-based, with five levels: Super Admin, Region Admin, Coordinator, Rescuer and Observer. A coordinator runs missions in their region, a rescuer sees what they need in the field, and an observer — a liaison from another agency, for example — can follow the operation without being able to change it.

Redoto Rescue is not a formal incident command system and does not claim certification against one. It is built to support the practices that incident command formalises: a clear mission state, a named coordinator, operational periods that teams know about, and accountability for every person sent into the field. When a rescuer goes on duty in an active mission, they appear on the coordinator’s map with their team. At the end of a shift you can account for everyone, which is a safety requirement before it is an administrative one.

06After-action reports and the audit trail

Every operation ends with questions. The debrief wants to know what worked. The family wants to know where you searched. Occasionally a formal review wants to know exactly when the decision was made to stand down the north side. An answer rebuilt from memory and scraps of paper does not hold up well to any of them.

Redoto Rescue generates after-action reports and mission timelines from the record the operation already produced: the event log, team tracks, sectors and coverage. Separately, the audit log keeps a complete, searchable trail of every sensitive action — who did it and when — filterable by action, entity and date. The report tells the story of the mission; the audit trail proves who changed what.

Mission management is one of eighteen modules; the full list is on the capabilities page. Teams that run most of their operations in steep terrain may also want to read how the platform fits mountain rescue.