The UK Home Office (Centre for Applied Science & Technology): Support to the Police Search Community. Specialist Ground and Marine Search Technology

The Centre for Applied Science and Technology (CAST) provides support for United Kingdom (UK) police operations and frontline delivery through the application of science and technology. The CAST Search Support team comprises a Search Technical Manager supported by highly trained, professional and experienced scientists and engineers from various backgrounds. This team provides bespoke ground search solutions, often at very short notice, to the security and law enforcement agencies across the UK. CAST also provides the rapid deployment of specialist teams to assist with locating missing persons, either underwater or on land. These searches may use geophysical equipment that includes sonar, magnetometers and ground penetrating radar (GPR). The CAST team has had particular success in finding missing persons in water using both side scan and 360o sector sonar systems. This team also works in close collaboration with the various regional police dive teams in this respect. The deployment of marine geophysical techniques has many advantages. For example, this saves significant amounts of time spent on costly underwater searches, since a large search area may belimited to a few potential targets by the marine geophysics, which can then be investigated by divers.