Hurricanes, tropical storms, coastal and inland flooding, wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters are causing widespread devastation throughout the country. In addition to the human and economic toll, the frequency and severity of these events has put increasing amounts of strain and pressure upon responder assets and the Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) community, itself.
But help is here.
“We are uniquely positioned to coordinate, lead, and fund the research, development, testing, and evaluation efforts across the homeland security enterprise, especially when capability gaps or operational inefficiencies become apparent. We knew there was a better way to do things, so we set out to make that happen,” said Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Community and Infrastructure Resilience lead Ron Langhelm. “SARCOP is a fantastic example of what can be done when you’ve got the right people who know the issue and you get them working together to solve the problem.”
SARCOP is an intuitive, secure, mobile, multiagency platform that aggregates massive amounts of information from disaster areas and enables the sharing of that intelligence before, during, and after the disaster. Using advanced geospatial analytics, SARCOP profoundly increases situational awareness, introducing exceptionally impactful efficiencies into the mission of rescuing people and saving lives.
In responding to catastrophic incidents, some of the first resources to arrive from outside the impacted area are US&R teams. In addition to the 28 official FEMA US&R Task Forces, there are hundreds of other state/local US&R teams spread out across the country.
US&R teams are comprised of specialized local responders, mobilized from their communities, and deployed as task forces. However, they often have limited knowledge of the specific localities they are rushing to assist. Despite this, when called upon, these specialized units jump into action, risking their personal safety in dangerous and unstable environments to save the lives of others.
Historically, due to the multijurisdictional nature of these response teams, they lacked a common platform for tracking and managing disaster response. “This capability gap can hamper communication and cripple coordination of the complex tasks required when tracking and directing time-sensitive rescue efforts,” said Langhelm. “In the past, some localities might have used paper notebooks to track search information while others have utilized spreadsheets and other computer-based tools. But having a unified mission toolset allows all US&R resources to effortlessly share information across the incident, minimizing communication delays and ensuring operational continuity.”
However, this all began to change after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Through a collaborative federal and non-profit initiative, S&T sought to close the gap and bring disparate US&R field operation mission execution methodologies under one standardized and easy-to-use umbrella. Over a three-year period, S&T partnered with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation and FEMA to build SARCOP. Then, once it launched, NAPSG Foundation provided SARCOP to US&R teams around the country at no cost. “The partnership itself is groundbreaking. Something like this has never been done before,” said Langhelm.
The partner organizations purposefully leveraged the US&R community in the development of this next-generation technology. The decision to have US&R teams embedded every step of the way has made a huge difference in SARCOP’s development, its usability, and its effectiveness at all levels of disaster response.
Today, SARCOP is a state-of-the-art, scalable, nationally available tool that aggregates access to mobile apps to dramatically increase the effectiveness and efficiency of search and rescue field operations. This includes increased resource management and an intuitive common geospatial platform that is shared among all US&R teams. Available on Windows, Apple and Android, SARCOP enables teams across the country to collaborate in real-time, on the same platform, at the strategic and tactical levels. This capability allows for a substantially more efficient response and provides a single location for all response data to be stored, analyzed, and shared.
Through NAPSG Foundation, SARCOP also provides remote geospatial support to US&R teams that are deployed. SARCOP transforms how search and rescue is conducted by expanding how teams can contribute to disaster response. This includes, but is not limited to, providing initial damage observations, which are crucial to providing the appropriate recovery resources to communities.
“US&R is inherently a spatial problem. Teams need to know where initially to search, where they have already searched, and where they need to search next,” said NAPSG Foundation Program Manager Jared Doke. “To do this, these teams need and deserve the best and most effective tools for the job. NAPSG Foundation was able to work with our federal partners and the US&R community to develop a transformative solution that is now used by teams throughout the entire country.”
NAPSG Foundation also provides no-cost onboarding, training, exercises, and post-event debriefs for all US&R teams.
“The best tools for first responders are the ones that they already know how to use,” said Paul Doherty, emergency management specialist (geospatial) at FEMA. “When we designed SARCOP, we built it off of a mobile platform for smartphones and used apps that were familiar to responders. We made it easy to train on and easy to use, and that’s a big reason why it’s been so successful.”
Training is key, because since 2021, SARCOP has been deployed in response to over 170 disasters and other events, including 84 deployments in 2024—and counting. SARCOP deployments have included Hurricanes Ida, Ian, and Idalia, wildfires in Texas, New Mexico, Hawaii and California, and flooding in Iowa, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York.
With SARCOP, agencies are making more timely and more accurate critical resource allocation decisions based on real-time intel during times of crisis, saving lives and taxpayer dollars. Langhelm pointed out, “In addition to lives saved, the dollar-to-impact ratio on SARCOP is truly incredible. Huge success.”
SARCOP’s ability to share real-time granular information (including specific structures that have already been searched, what those searches produced, and where each US&R team is headed next) is a game-changing advance in disaster response. It certainly is for the people waiting, and hoping, to be rescued. For them, this is a matter of life and death.
“The level of total team situational awareness that SARCOP enables is unprecedented. It supports better decision making. It enhances allocation management. It reduces duplication of efforts. This is exactly what the development team set out to achieve. Efficiencies of this nature save time. And time saved equates to lives saved,” said Langhelm.
