A system to help keep track of gap year backpackers has been developed with help from Brighton University students and is being made available from today.
The university said: “It’s every parent’s nightmare – their son or daughter is off travelling and suddenly the emails and phone calls stop.
“Have they been injured, robbed, or worse?”
The new system has been developed with help from students at the Brighton Business School, which is part of the university.
It is called the Travellers’ Electronic Safety System (TESS) and can help trace missing people and could save lives.
It works by travellers logging on to the TESS website and updating their movements and plans including flights, bus trips, directions taken, hotels/hostels stayed at, and cities and places visited.
Should contact be lost then loved ones and the authorities can use TESS to short-cut what is often a torturous and lengthy process of tracing their last-known whereabouts.
Speed
The university said that speed at times like this was critical. And by speeding up the process the chances of tracing someone who has gone missing while travelling is greatly improved.
In cases where the traveller has been injured or kidnapped, the prospect of their survival is also improved.
Instead of police following cold trails and relying on scant information from families and witnesses, they can tap into TESS and find the latest information supplied by the travellers themselves.
More than 250,000 backpackers set off from Britain every year and many travel to remote and distant places, the university said.
A small number go missing and, thankfully, the vast majority are traced and found safe and well.
To support TESS, the National Policing Improvement Agency, which manages technology and support services to help police forces, has agreed to provide a central point of access to the system.
Charlie Hedges, NPIA Missing Persons Bureau liaison and support officer, said: “The bureau is pleased to provide a point of access as, sadly, things do sometimes go wrong when people are travelling.
“On those rare occasions, it is essential that the most up-to-date information is available about their whereabouts.
Extensive
“The bureau also has extensive international contacts and links to Interpol which are of benefit in such investigations.”
And Martin Clayton, a vice-president of the Brighton Student Union, said: “TESS could prove an invaluable addition to an individual’s travel plans.
“The peace of mind for both the traveller and loved ones back home is a priceless commodity and, hopefully, this new innovation will allow speedier access to information that may prove vital in finding a missing person.
“Anything that contributes to a student’s safety abroad is always welcomed and, for such a low price, it is difficult to find fault.”
The idea for TESS began four years ago when Dr Roger Saunders, senior lecturer at the university’s Brighton Business School, was approached by the Home Office.
He was asked to conduct research on kidnaps for the then National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), which is now the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).
Part of the research focused on backpackers who go missing and organisations contacted during the study included the Lucie Blackman Trust.
The trust was formed after the former flight attendant was found dead in a Japanese village in 2000 after a seven-month search.
Abductions
Dr Saunders joined forces with Nick Johnston, a retired police officer who spent many years with NCIS and was a specialist on missing people and child abductions, and Simon Stock, a retired chartered accountant.
They are the two directors of TessOnLine, the company behind the TESS website.
Mr Johnston said: “Parents often ask children to ‘contact me once a week’ when they go off on gap-year travels and that works for a couple of weeks.
“But they soon forget to call or email and worried families will report their loved ones missing.
“When police officers start investigating, they find relatives can provide only limited and often out-dated information.
“Officers and the Foreign Office make inquiries with overseas police services and Interpol but they sometimes find the trails have gone cold.”
Dr Saunders said: “It was evident that there was a need to look at this issue in more detail.
“As a result of all this, TessOnLine came up with software that allows backpackers and all other travellers to send text messages, emails, etc, to a ‘vault’ that stores this information in the event that it might be needed.”
Simon Stock said: “The whole idea behind TESS is to reduce the time between someone being reported missing and identifying their last whereabouts.
“It makes it quicker and easier to establish someone is safe and well, relieving stress and trauma for anxious families and friends.”
Travellers pay £20 a year to have access to the “vault” via computers or mobile phones, using their own unique log-in Pin key to update their travel log book from wherever they are in the world.
Confidential
The information they send is encrypted and confidential and gives the traveller the freedom to put private and confidential information into the vault.
This can include information they wouldn’t necessarily divulge openly to relatives.
Only in the event that they need tracing will the vault be accessed, and only by the Missing Persons’ Bureau.
Students at Brighton University took part in a questionnaire and their comments about TESS helped develop the software which will go ‘live’ in a few weeks’ time.
Dr Saunders said: “One student told us how his brother went to Thailand and hasn’t been heard from for four years.
“Another said they would be prepared to pay £100 for a service like TESS.”
One student interviewed, Chandni Dudhaiya, said: “It’s definitely something I would consider using”.
Another, Daniel Martin, said: “It would give my mum and dad peace of mind.”
Dr Saunders said: “TESS is a cheap, easy-to-use system that can save a lot of public expenditure in terms of searching.
“It can save people from worry and, in some instances, save lives.”
