Live team positions with no cellular
Over mesh, with store-and-forward through relay caches.
Industries · Field work · Whitepaper
One picture. Every team.
A search is a coordination problem under time pressure with volunteers, agencies and terrain that all disagree. The decisive capability is a shared operating picture that keeps working when the teams are in the drainage where the subject went missing.
01 / Problem statement
What actually goes wrong.
SAR operations fail at the seams, not at the search.
The teams are on different systems. Volunteers, agency staff and mutual-aid resources arrive with different apps, different radios and different coordinate conventions. Reconciling them consumes the first hour of an operation where the first hour matters most.
The picture goes stale where the search happens. Command has coverage; the teams do not. Assignment state, cleared segments and clue locations stop flowing exactly where they are generated.
The record has to survive review. Every operation is reviewed. An account of what was searched, when, by whom, and to what probability of detection is not administrative overhead — it is the output.
02 / Mechanism
How NavTrax addresses each one.
Each entry names the mechanism rather than the benefit, so it can be evaluated rather than believed.
- Shared operating picture over mesh
- Team positions, assignment state and cleared segments propagate over mesh with store-and-forward, so the picture updates in the drainage rather than at the road.
- Group relay for the whole operation
- The first team to regain a signal synchronizes every team it can reach. Command does not have to wait for each team to walk out.
- Segment assignment and clearance
- Segments as first-class objects with assignment, clearance state and time, syncing as causally ordered operations so two teams reporting concurrently do not overwrite each other.
- Third-party track ingest
- Positions from satellite messengers carried by teams and, where available, from the subject, appear on the same picture.
- On-device triage at contact
- When the subject is found, wound assessment, a care plan and a MEDEVAC window are computed on the device, and the handoff packet includes landing-zone options.
- Immutable operational record
- Every position, assignment, clearance and alert attempt recorded with timestamps, exportable for the review.
03 / Capabilities
In the field, this is what you have.
Segment state that converges
Concurrent clearance reports merge rather than overwrite.
Terrain analysis for planning
Slope, aspect, drainage and vegetation, offline, at LiDAR resolution where flown.
Drone tasking into the picture
Search patterns generated over terrain, feed relayed to command.
Triage and MEDEVAC at contact
On-device, with landing-zone options in the handoff.
Review-grade record
Exportable, timestamped, complete — including the attempts that failed.
04 / Reference
| Surface | Cellular | Mesh | Satellite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team positions | Yes | Yes | Digest |
| Segment assignment | Yes | Yes | Digest |
| Clue and clearance reports | Yes | Yes | Digest |
| Drone video feed | Yes | Relay | No |
| Triage and MEDEVAC packet | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Operational record | Yes | Queued | Queued |
05 / Process
Traced, node by node.
The picture must survive the drainage.
Group relay and mesh are Pro. Drone tasking is Elite. Audit and multi-agency administration are Enterprise.