ICPEM Collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

Paul Smith

On the afternoon of the 18 February 2026 the Royal Geographical Society a held symposium that provided expert lectures related to geospatial intelligence for crisis response. The event was held at the RGS’s prestigious Kensington Gore premises in central London. 

An oil painting of Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) is hung on the wall, Scott being a Royal Navy officer and explorer celebrated for leading two major Antarctic expeditions on the Discovery and the Terra Nova. Modern technology to help emergency crisis response was therefore being presented and discussed at the RGS overseen by past pioneers and innovators. ICPEM helped to fund and support the symposium, with Ian Greatbatch and Paul Smith of ICPEM attending.

The RGS symposium brought together researchers, practitioners, and innovators from across the fields of geography, disaster management, including search and rescue operations to find missing people. The expert lectures presented the application and advantages for using geospatial tools, methods and intelligence during crisis response operations.

The range of subjects discussed at the RGS symposium included people’s behaviour under stressful circumstances, behavioural modelling and analysis, lost person geographics, optimising priority search zones, the application of drones, mapping techniques using drones, AI-enabled damage assessment, as well as the problems and challenges associated with finding lost people in both rural and urban environments.

Particular issues like how people’s behaviour can vary and dramatically change according to the types of terrain, the local environment’s conditions at given point in time, cultural groups and the disparate perspectives that can arise, and even the time of day or night when search and disaster scenarios occur. What was also of great interest was integrating theoretical frameworks with applied approaches, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue between practitioners and research bodies,the importance of geographical knowledge and expertise for planners, emergency responders, remote sensing specialists and disaster scientists.

The symposium had significant attendance and was a positive experience – an extremely worthwhile event for the Royal Geographical Society, together with ICPEM’s collaborative support.