Deriving Effective Sweep Width for Air-scent Dog Teams

Wilderness & Environmental Medicine
Kenneth B ChiacchiaRebecca S Hostetter

Abstract

We sought to obtain the first effective sweep widths (ESWs) ever measured for an air-scent search dog unit to compare their performance to historical data from human searchers and to initially test the validity of atmospheric convection as a limiting factor in air-scent search. We used GPS tracks and waypoints to measure lateral hit and miss distances for the dog teams during blinded, randomized training tasks during a 6-year period, calculating ESW using the crossover method. During the tasks we collected weather data for determining convection. We used nonparametric statistics and least-square regression to compare the dog ESW data with historical human data and weather conditions. The mean value of ESW for the 4 teams under all conditions was 95 m (95% CI, 44 to 145). The dog teams' performance was statistically superior to human visual searchers in detecting search subjects in low-visibility colors, but not subjects in high-visibility colors. A nonparametric correlation test of ESW vs convection gave P<.05, suggesting that convection may be an operationally significant factor in air-scent dog performance. The ESW methodology is applicable to air-scent dog teams, potentially allowing search managers to make decisions in appl...Continue Reading

References

Sep 14, 2010·Wilderness & Environmental Medicine·Kenneth B Chiacchia, Heather E Houlahan

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