TBRescue

TB Rescue is a tool with the goal of helping owners of trackables get their trackables moved when they seem to be stuck in a geocache. Users can sign up to watch areas where they are willing to try to help with this, when an owner of a trackable adds a rescue mission within the user's watched area the user will be notified about the mission and can try to help them out.

Rescue missions

There are some criterias that need to be fulfilled to create a rescue mission.

• The user must own the trackable.
• The trackable must be in a geocache.
• The trackable must have been stuck for at least 4 weeks.

Only trackables registered at Geocaching.com are supported.

Rescue missions will automatically be closed with the status completed if the trackable is logged with certain logs like Retrieve It from a Cache. The mission will automatically be canceled if there are three or more DNF logs on the mission at Project-GC. The tool is in beta.

To start the actual rescue mission the user clicks on the marker for the missing trackable, this shows a box with links to the trackable-page and the trackable owners profile. There is also a button labeled "Rescue mission" that is used to access the tools functions.

Clicking the "rescue mission"-button will show some more information about the mission:

• Name of the trackable
• Name of the owner
• Date and timestamp of when the mission was created
• How long ago the mission was created
• Number of views of the mission
• What geocache the trackable was last dropped off in
• When the trackable data was refreshed
• The mission text chosen by the owner of the trackable

There are also buttons for refreshing the trackable data and create a log on the rescue mission. A user can also press the star in the top left corner to bookmark the rescue mission. Clicking on the button labeled "Create log" opens a text input area with three radio buttons for "Note", "Found" and "DNF", the log created will belong to the rescue mission and is therefor created and viewable on Project-GC only.

Global statistics

The page offers some global statistics on TB rescue missions. These are listed below. The user can also see how many active zones they are watching and how large of an area their watch covers.

• Total number of missions created
• Total number of missions completed
• Total number of missions active
• Total number of rescuers
• Total number of watch areas
• Total area covered

Map

The TB Rescue map is the main part of the tool. The user's active watch areas are marked with a green circle and inactive ones are marked with a red circle. Areas watched by other users are marked by blue circles.

All active rescue missions have a clickable marker. The color of the marker is green if it is inside one of the user's active watch zones, yellow if it is inside someone else's and red if it is outside of everyone's watch zones. The marker has a number on it, this shows the number of logs on the specific rescue mission.

Project-GC recommends that users that plan to visit a geocache to look for a trackable write a note in the online log book of the rescue mission to show other potential rescuers their intention. Once the geocache has been checked the user should log a DNF or a Found on the rescue mission to show their results.

Map features

The TB rescue map has some of the normal map features like the ability to select different maps, full screen and zoom levels. There is also buttons to measure distance, search the map or show a pin at the user's location.

At the top left corner is an icon of a pair of binoculars, this is the menu where a user adds the zones they want to watch. Clicking on the binoculars opens a box with a list of the user's zones, clicking the button "Add zone" opens the option to add a new zone. The information needed is name of the zone, coordinates for the center of the zone and the radius of the zone. The user can enable or disable the watch of the zone by using the checkbox.

Below the binocular-icon there is a icon that looks like a flag. This icon is used to access the user's bookmarked rescue missions.

Completed missions

This tab shows a list of the last 100 completed rescue missions. The information showed is the public TB code, the timestamp of completion, who completed it, when the mission was created, number of logs on the mission, number of views of the mission and the mission text.

Statistics

This tab shows a number of top lists related to the TB rescue missions, a filter for countries can be applied and there are options to show the statistics per rescuer or per country.

The available top lists are:

• Active rescue missions per user or country
• Successful missions per rescuer or country
• Square km covered per rescuer or user country
• Logs per user or user country

My missions

This tab is where a user can create a new rescue mission. Only the public reference number is needed to create a rescue mission but only the owner of the trackable can create a rescue mission for it. A rescue mission can only be created if the trackable has been stuck in the same geocache for at least four weeks.

This tab also shows information about the user's earlier rescue missions.