For details of the data collection elements for the project see:
Online GPS data collection
GPS tracking events

Terrain and navigation are intrinsically linked with human movement in a wilderness environment. In 1995, Gollege stated, "The human navigation system interacts with and adapts to the environment in which it is navigating". This project aims to explore this concept, looking at people’s interaction with the environment by exploring how and where people move in the wilderness. The project will build on two years of honours research where I looked at lost person behaviour in the Australian wilderness and built a model which incorporated spatial data and lost person behaviour to identify likely search areas for lost people.

At the conclusion of my honours project, while the model worked as intended, I found some areas that could be improved to better reflect how people move in the wilderness. This included the incorporation of more goals and sub-goals, better decision-making and navigation behaviour, as well as the inclusion of additional terrain features, such as track junctions, water crossings, sharp bends, or elevation changes and landmarks, which may affect a person’s navigation. So, with this insight, my PhD project intends to expand the model that I previously built to make it more robust and accurate, as well as include all people, not just those that are lost.