Ohcci: Ground Search Coverage

SAIFULLAH

About this app

When someone goes missing, the people who start looking are usually the family and the
neighbours. Everyone sets off at once, several of them walk the same street, and hours later
nobody can say which ground has actually been covered. The searching is real; the record of it
is not.

Ohcci turns that effort into a record.

The coordinator sets up one search with a current photo, a short description, and the place the
person was last seen. Ohcci divides the surrounding area into hexagonal cells, ranked not by
plain distance but by how far a person could realistically have travelled since that moment, and
weighted by the places the family says matter — a home, a school, a shop, a route, a water edge.

Everyone else joins with an eight-character code and says how they are moving: walking, by
bicycle, or by vehicle. Each person is given one cell at a time, matched to how they travel, and
no two people are given the same cell. When a cell is finished it is marked complete, and the
coordinator's map fills in.

What the coordinator sees is coverage — which cells are covered, which are being worked, and
which are still untouched. What the coordinator does not see is any person's position or the
route they walked. That is a deliberate design choice, and it is what makes volunteers willing
to take part.

Phones that are near each other pass completed cells directly between themselves when there is
no usable signal, so a search does not stop where the network does.

When the search ends, the whole record exports as a single handover document for the police or
the responsible authority — cells and timings, not volunteer routes. Closing the search deletes
it everywhere, including on the phones that joined.

Ohcci is an independent coordination tool. It is not an emergency service and has no connection
to any police force or rescue organisation. In any missing-person situation, contact your local
emergency services first and follow their direction.

What’s new

Initial release of Ohcci. Create coordinated ground searches, invite volunteers with a private code, assign map cells by travel mode, monitor coverage, and export a handover record.