Topo maps with lat and long grids.

[LTC Don]

North Carolina at the state level is USNG, as hopefully are most states. 

During a recent missing person exercise using canine teams, and team members using handheld GPS devices, we had a challenging time with teams calling in coordinates in lat/long and utm.  One team in particular had a hard time configuring the device to give the correct level of utm down to their actual position.  So, even the civilian sar groups are still learning the technologies.  Paper still ruled when it came down to the final analysis.

Canine teams are a unique challenge since the dog dictates the route and speed of travel, making it near impossible to keep up with bearings and pace count.  There are now gps units that can be affixed to the dog with rapid setting waypoints to fully track a dogs complete track.

CAP needs to be teaching GPS technologies, lat/long, and USNG/UTM.  There shouldn't be any discussion at this point in our evolution and this being 2011.  UTM has been around a very long time, and the civilian SAR community has been using it for quite a good while now.

[Ed Bos]

The AKWG is using GARS to identify search grids, since the 11th RCC is passing information to us that way.

At the NESA GTL school we're teaching Lat/Long, UTM, and briefly touching on GARS (since we're time-compressed as it is we can only mention it, really) and the CAP grid system (since the latter is in the task guide).

Just food for the conversation.

Does anyone have any best practices, or techniques that they can verify are especially useful?

[SARJunkie]

Any modern GPS that supports MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) will work with USNG, by simply switching the Datum from WGS84 to NAD83.

Now you display USNG vs MGRS.

So to convert a lat long to USNG, you simply change the coordinate system and datum back and forth on your GPS.

[starshippe]

. . there are several conversion routines available, but the delorme topo software will let u select from, and convert between.....

. . deg, deg.min, deg min sec, utm/ups, mgrs, usng, and spcs.

. . i've been expecting the af to throw a set of utm coordinates at us during an evaluation for a decade or so. my guess is, its not going to happen.
. . if u find the utm conversion excel spreadsheet written by steve dutch, let me know and i will give u a fix for a rounding problem it has. 

73,
bill

[Major Lord]

Drawing lat/long accurately on a 2 dimensional map would be simple if the earth was a sphere.......unfortunately, its an Ovoid Sphere. I blame global warming .

Major Lord

[Eclipse]

LAT / LONG is NOT universal.

there are three formats of Lat/Long.  When the State Police use one, CAP uses another, local sar uses the third.  How is that universal?

It's universal in regards to consumer-level devices, which is for the most part what you are going to see on CAP missions - other agencies can
use whatever they want, issued or otherwise, but most smartphones, handheld GPS's, and similar devices can decode LAT / LONG in whatever format
is specified.

This continued notion that one agency will report in one format and another will report in a different one is silly.  As space said, The IC simply specifies the format.  If you can't coordinate something simple like that, you're cooked on anything bigger.  Do we just throw up our hands on radio frequencies when the mission calls for inter-agency cooperation?   Of course not - we either give the other agency the freqs they need (in exchange for a kidney),
get them from them, or hand them a compliant radio and show them the on switch.  Same goes for GPS's.

Further, in terms of accuracy, as a reminder, we train and operate in a +/-5 degree world.

It is amazing the lengths that people will go to justify doing thing the hard way because it is "better".

The next thing we'll get is a suggestion that we better wholescale abandon handheld GPS's with moving map displays and cellular phones with data capabilities because "...in the big one they won't work, and POTUS could take out the birds during an insurrection..."

While you're gridding your charts by hand and putting up the masts, I'll be over here trying to find the missing people.  Want to know where I am?
Join my Latitude circle and track me in real time, or I can hit the "I am here" button and send you my coordinates and a link to a Google map.

[Eclipse]

the problem is, if the other agencies dont know what 'datum' that they use, how do we know?  example.

Last REDCAP I Ic'd:

Local sheriffs office gave us coordinates in  Lat/Long    in the  dd.dddd format:
27.4657  -82.2134
After confirning they wer degrees decimal, we sent a team to the area.

found it to not even be in thier county.

What they meant was
27 47.57    82 21.34  degrees min.decimal min
Over 22 Miles away. and a seperate format. 


So even when we confirmed the format was 'correct' they still were not.  and the mission was delayed several hours!

A good GBD / IC should be tracking the teams in real time - I don't send anyone anywhere until I confirm that
the coordinates make sense.   Why would you send a team without looking at a map?

[SarDragon]

Drawing lat/long accurately on a 2 dimensional map would be simple if the earth was a sphere.......unfortunately, its an Ovoid Sphere. I blame global warming .

Major Lord

The conic projections used on sectionals and TACs do pretty well. I've checked out known locations on a sectional against my GPS (the one I got from Ian, AAMOF) and there is pretty close agreement. Same for de Lorme Gazetteers.

[SARJunkie]

Again,  Everyone else uses USNG.  How are we to inter-operate with them if were not on the same page?

USNG is a capability of any modern GPS!

[starshippe]

. . the gps enabled 406 mhz elts and epirbs are reporting their position in latitude and longitude.

bill

[SARJunkie]

This again brings up the issue of "The CAP bubble"   as long as we are only working with ourselves, we are ok.  But knowbody wants to break the 'bubble' and interoperate with others.   As soon as we start to play with other agencies we MUST learn the standards outside of the 'CAP Bubble'

[Eclipse]

Again,  Everyone else uses USNG.  How are we to inter-operate with them if were not on the same page?

USNG is a capability of any modern GPS!

Define "everybody"...

Because I can tell you that "everybody" with a GPS is capable of Lat / Long, but not "everybody" even knows what USNG even is.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware, but it also doesn't mean we start changing our ops just because we "might" work with an agency that uses it.  Give me proficient members in the field and air that are just capable of reporting their position accurately in LAT / LONG (vs "12 miles from the VOR" or "by the McDonald's at Main and 6th") and the rest can be converted as needed by the branch directors, since position reports and tasking orders should be going through the ICP, not direct between teams anyway.

I had a conversation last night with my CD who just got back from a planning meeting regarding a region-wide
exercise (real-world, non-CAP directed), and I can tell you, as most of us know, that just because an agency or group is city/state/fed funded, doesn't mean they have their act together any more than CAP does, and in a lot
of cases, especially in terms of coordinated response and use of ICS, CAP is the best-trained, most experienced asset in the room.

For all that sentence means in every direction...

[SARJunkie]

At least in the South East US most agencies have transitioned to USNG.  It is mandated by FEMA.  Again, if we want to play nice with others we need to learn it.

Not everything is coordinated through the GBD.  A team in contact with lets say Fish and wildlife needs to coordinate and converge on a location.  The two teams can talk to each other. If FW uses USNG, how is the CAP Ground Team they are talking to navigate the the convergance point?

During a disaster CAP is asked to checkout a target ,  wich is givin in USNG. 
Why would we convert it, introduce error, and extra time?  makes no sense!

[chief2]

During Deep Water Horizon (DWH) all products located, boom locations) was given to the USCG in lat-lon format, at their request and this was in the SER.

[Larry Mangum]

So that makes sense that in SER you might need to use USNG. Out west, where you might be working for a state agency which uses just plain old lat and long, it would not make sense.   The important thing is that the wing be able to provide it's customers the data they requested or need.  Let's not try to mandate a change across all of CAP that may cause more of a problem then it solves.  Yes, FEMA may mandate it, but it took a presidential executive order just to get everyone down the path to NIMS compliance. How has that worked out, is every one on the same page now?

[sardak]

Too bad you clarified "everyone." I had a huge stack of cash ready to bet against that.

USNG was adopted as a federal standard in 2001, before the Shuttle Columbia search, Katrina, Rita, etc. It wasn't the common method used on any of them. After Katrina, the National SAR Committee was tasked with coming up with a common system for SAR. At that time the SAR world "discovered" USNG. NSARC and FEMA had no choice in what to declare the standard. However, their policies only apply when the feds are in charge of an incident.

This is from the published Catastrophic Incident SAR (CISAR) supplement to the National SAR Supplement and this same wording is in the draft Land SAR supplement to the NSS.

- Land SAR responders use U.S. National Grid; however, a good familiarity with latitude and longitude is necessary to ensure effective interface between Land and Aeronautical SAR responders (Note: Land SAR includes SAR on flooded terrain).

- Aeronautical SAR responders will use latitude and longitude for SAR response. However, aeronautical SAR responders that work directly with Land SAR responders should understand the U.S. National Grid system for effective Land SAR/Aeronautical SAR interface.

- Air space deconfliction will only be implemented and managed using latitude and longitude.

- Aeronautical SAR responders working with Land SAR responders have the primary responsibility of coordinating SAR using USNG. However both groups must become familiar with both georeference systems.

As for GARS, it's an area reference system, not a point reference system, and is only used for airspace management.

For the above visit: http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg534/nsarc/Georeferencing_info.asp

By international conventions, the aeronautical standard for position reporting and Cospas-Sarsat locations are latitude and longitude.

In the US, the Sarsat messages automatically generated and sent to the RCCs have the positions in lat/lon to a tenth of a minute resolution. This isn't going to change. Perhaps in the future the RCCs may have the controllers convert the lat/lon to USNG, but that would be a mistake.

Any modern GPS that supports MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) will work with USNG, by simply switching the Datum from WGS84 to NAD83.

Having someone switch between NAD83 and WGS84 is an unnecessary step that leads to potential errors by the user accidentally switching to the wrong datum. NAD83 and WGS84 are considered equivalent because the max position difference between them is only about 2 meters, well within the accuracy of anything SAR is doing.

This is the exact same point, to the same resolution of 1 meter.
13S ED 05529 64533  USNG-NAD83
13S ED 05529 64533  MGRS-WGS84
13S 0505529  4364533  UTM-NAD83 or WGS84

What is important though is that many, many topo maps are drawn to NAD27. The differences between NAD83/WGS84 and NAD27 when using USNG/MGRS/UTM can be a couple of hundred meters. This may or may not be a big deal depending on what the coordinates are being used for.

All that being said, I'm in favor of using USNG/MGRS/UTM, since UTM has been used in SAR for decades, though not everywhere. It was a CAP task at one time but was dropped. However, we still have to know and use lat/lon.

Mike

[SARJunkie]

During Deep Water Horizon (DWH) all products located, boom locations) was given to the USCG in lat-lon format, at their request and this was in the SER.

The florida portion of the mission was in USNG!

[Spaceman3750]

During Deep Water Horizon (DWH) all products located, boom locations) was given to the USCG in lat-lon format, at their request and this was in the SER.

The florida portion of the mission was in USNG!

So the rest of the states were on one system and Florida was on another? That makes very little sense.

Also, you might want to stop using exclamation points after every sentence with USNG in it. Otherwise I'm going to expect that you will start calling USNG magical and revolutionary^TM.

[SARJunkie]

the reason being is, after about 4 days when every agency involved was using a difirent coordinate system , Florida got smart and everyone went to USNG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[chief2]

All the Florida aircraft that were working the gulf gave me the reports in lat and lon. which I relayed to their command center in lat and lon, I was the CUL and MRO for 113 days, so I know how the reports came in from Florida.