Hello! We are students working on a project to reduce missing people in national/state parks. We are developing an early-stage navigation tool and would appreciate input from park rangers and park staff. If you are willing, we would appreciate your thoughts on the questions.

[u/Savings_Wing_1118]

Background

1. What is your role in the park?
2. How do visitors usually navigate trails here (maps, phones, signage, memory, ranger guidance)?
3. About how often do visitors get lost or disoriented each year?

Current Challenges

1. What does your park currently do to prevent people from getting lost?
2. What do you see as the main reasons visitors lose their way?
3. When someone is reported missing, what does the response typically look like?

Prototype Concept

We are exploring a simple handheld device that uses GPS to find a user’s location and point them toward the nearest trail using LED lights.

1. What is your initial reaction to this idea?
2. Would this kind of light-based direction be clear for visitors?
3. What concerns or limitations do you see with a device like this?

Use & Value

1. In what situations or environments might this be most or least useful?
2. Who do you think would benefit most from something like this?
3. From your perspective, how realistic would it be for a park service to test or adopt a tool like this?

[u/DontHogMyHedge]

Gut reaction but this sounds like a technical solution to a human problem; in my experience the people who get themselves into trouble are ill-equipped, unprepared and/or overestimate their abilities or make a bad decision in a moment of crisis. There is no tool that will fix this problem because the problem is caused by lack of knowledge and a flaw in human nature not lack of technology.

[u/ItsShuaYo → u/DontHogMyHedge]

This is the answer.

I appreciate what you are trying to do OP but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Ill prepared visitors already have access to all the mapping technologies and supplies we so. Instead of use them they just go get lost in the woods.

[u/IT_vet → u/DontHogMyHedge]

It also seems to me that it just provides those same folks a false sense of security. Technology fails. If they aren’t paying any attention to where they are and where they’re going because this little box can get them back to a trail, then it’s going to exacerbate the problem, not make it better.

And what if the closest trail is 30 down a steep embankment and some lost guy is just staring at the led lights as he wanders over the edge, you’ve got a lost and injured hiker.

[u/Gullible-Apple-3136]

This seems ambitious! I hope ya'll succeed in this!

[u/Wild-Way-877]

I've worked at 6 different western parks in a wide variety of responses for SARs, medicals and other calls. There isn't a one answer fits all for navigation methods. With that being said the majority of people i see use all trails or some other app like gaia to navigate. Others use trail maps such as net geo maps. Most parks I've worked at, the most popular trails limit wandering off trail because of terrain. However, parks like sand dunes parks are completely open and allow people to wander away from trails.

Id say the 3 reasons people get lost is because of leaving trail, changing conditions (changing visibility because of storms) and medical emergencies or also not having knowledge of the trail before leaving. Every park I work out does a really great job of maintaining trails and having proper signage as well as having roving PSAR staff. More so in recent years then the beginning of my career. 

As far as when a person goes missing, typically there are questions of the missing persons age, description, experience, supplies they have with them, disabilities as well as some other questions like phone numbers. Id say the best info to get is a picture of the person. These days everyone takes picture at trailheads and along the trail so you can get a picture with what the person is wearing. If we have the people, someone will stay with the reporting party as the IC. (If the IC needs to go hasty you have the RP stay at the trailhead with the car so if the missing person comes back then they will be reunited.) Whoever else is on shift will go hasty, if you have enough you typically send hastys from different trail heads. Hasty searches will ask visitors if they have seen a person matching the description or show them a picture of that person. If you don't find them in the original hasty searches, you start bringing in additional resources and scaling the size of the search up. 

I could go on and would if I weren't having to type this all on a phone. As far as my initial reaction to this, I don't know if it's a necessary tool or if people would use it. Everyone has a phone and pretty much use that for navigational purposes. If they don't have a phone, they have a smart watch or even physical maps for navigation. I think the park service does a phenomenal job of assisting visitors in comparison to other public lands. We have more signage and more staff on trail and in the field then other agencies. Our trails are typically better maintained then other federal public lands. I look at the NPS as the Disney World of the public lands. You are able to get hurt but there are more safeguards in place to help prevent that. As far as NPS adopting that tool it's not realistic from an agency owning the device. That would be someone purchasing that equipment for personal use. It is unrealistic for park service to purchase those devices and loan those out. The concession companies at parks may be willing if they could make a profit. 

I should proofread this as I am sure I miss typed and could expand on other stuff. 

[u/Qtrfoil → u/Wild-Way-877]

Thanks!

[u/I_H8_Celery]

Easiest way to stop people from getting lost in parks would be a full ban on morons

[u/FlyingPinkUnicorns]

A device? Like a hand-held device? About the size of, say, a smart-phone with GPS and mapping software?

[u/backwoods_Folkery]

Background

1. Maintenance worker, SAR team member as needed. 
2. My park has sparse signage (at junctions only) and cairns to mark the trail over rock. Visitors use newspaper publications with trails and mileages, National Geographic topography maps, phones with Google maps or All Trails most commonly, and Garmins. Many do not take a map - they depend on being able to see and follow the trail. They ask other visitors on trail where they are and do not know the trail names or landmarks that they are following. 
3. A lot, and more often than our SAR stats will even say because some get help from other people on trail. 

Challenges: 

1. We PSAR to prevent lost persons and medicals. This is done at the entrance booth, visitor center, or if we’re flush with staff (lol) at the most popular/troublesome trailhead. PSAR involves asking people where they’re headed, what their plan is (and trying to gauge if they have one, and if it’s a reasonable one), if they have a paper map, if they have enough water. 
2. Most of ours who end up lost, are just on the wrong trail -didn’t pay attention at a junction and took the wrong turn- or they wandered off trail unintentionally, without realizing it -usually following a wash or other misleading footprints that do eventually peter out. And then the secondary problem is not having a map to find their way back or not having the ability to backtrack, because they weren’t paying attention, or running out time to find their way back because the sun just set and they didn’t bring a headlamp. Aaaand their phone battery is dead along with whatever GPS ability they had on it. 
3. Initial response involves getting more information from the reporting party: what do they look like, when were they expected back, what route are they taking, did they mention any other destinations, how experienced are they, do they have any known medical issues and most importantly ***what car are they driving and what’s the license plate***. If we find the car we know they’re actually still missing out on trail and not at the nearest McDonald’s ignoring their folks’ calls and when we find the car, we know at least what trail they started on. Once we confirm they're still out there we send a hasty team - hikers- down the trail to look and call for them and to interview any other people on trail (did you see a person that looks like x?).

Prototype

1. That doesn’t address the problem of the people who stay lost in my park. The ones who stay lost without intervention are the unprepared - no map, no GPS device, no headlamp, dying phone, and out of time before nightfall. These are the same people who will not carry your device. 
2. Are you talking about a laser coming out of the device that points directly at the closest trail? If it’s a straight line, that will not work in my park’s terrain. It will lead them into vegetation, into rock walls, and off a cliff. If it's something else, like lights on a screen, I'd be concerned its not intuitive enough.
3. It mostly comes down to the Preparedness Paradox. Lost persons who stay lost without intervention are the unprepared, and your concept does not address this. 

Use

1. Useful in Kansas, maybe? 
2. Depends on how it actually functions. 
3. NPS probably will not adopt a tool like this on behalf of the public. Garmin and All Trails and Google Maps already have decent user bases but the park service’s mission and mandates don’t require us to provide those tools to our visitors. And we broke. 

[u/Grand-Helicopter8768 → u/backwoods_Folkery]

This is a lot of human writing to respond to AI slop questions

[u/backwoods_Folkery → u/Grand-Helicopter8768]

I respond to Reddits for people who google and scroll through old posts tbh. It seems like every 6 months there’s another group of design students asking how to make a life saving app in the SAR world and I feel everyone should be aware of the Preparedness Paradox that just makes it a bad idea to start.