Two papers at ISSW 2026
Two papers on winter search and rescue decision-making will be presented at the International Snow Science Workshop at Whistler in 2026.
Winter Response Team
Erik Olson, Brad Hefta-Gaub, Jim Hirshfield
A rapid-activation winter response team can brief incident command with a GO, DELAY, or NO-GO recommendation before rescuers deploy into avalanche terrain. The paper describes how such a team is structured, activated, and used inside an existing SAR command structure.
Decision-making under Constraint
Brad Hefta-Gaub, Erik Olson, Jim Hirshfield
Recreational avalanche decision-making frameworks assume you can choose your destination and your timing. A rescue team can do neither — the subject’s location sets the destination and the clock sets the timing. This paper proposes a framework for making terrain decisions when both of those variables are already fixed.
Why this matters here
These papers were based on experience from many years of participation in Ski Patrol Rescue Team. This experience informs the products we build.
Research is conducted through SPART.