Finding Missing People

As has been well reported, USA Today had an article about the search for bin Laden. While the techniques described are mostly used to find criminals, I wonder if similar techniques could be used to find missing kids, elderly or mentally disabled persons.


While I'm not suggesting these populations act the same as criminals, I think its fairly reasonable that kids for instance might be attracted to certain areas (trees, creeks, etc.) where they could get lost. Same might be true for elderly or mentally disabled persons. It would be interesting to generate a missing person heat map to help aid in search efforts.