A SEARCH AND RESCUE MODEL FOR TRACING OBJECTS IN THE PERSIAN GULF

Every year a number of reports about human bodies and boats missing in the Persian Gulf are received. Finding the lost objects was incentive for developing a numericalmodel for the prediction of their floating motion on the sea. A search and rescue (SAR) Fortran code based on the method proposed by Breivik and Allen [1] has beendeveloped herein.Many factors such as wind and current fields, release time and position, etc. affect the motion of the objects in the sea. A stochastic model based on the Monte Carlomethod has been used to account for the uncertainties in these factors. Search zones for alternative uncertainties are then proposed by the model. The empirical leewaycoefficients compiled with the US Coast Guard [2] are used for considering the effect of wind field on the motion of the objects.