After his aunt, Emilia 'Emilietta' Chini, a 75-year-old woman with dementia, went missing in the Limburg municipality of Maasmechelen in late February and her body was only found a week later, Ben Chini developed a new app to help groups of people carry out a targeted and coordinated search for a missing person.
When Emilietta disappeared from her home at the edge of a large wooded area on 22 February, local and federal police, as well as the Missing Persons Unit, immediately launched a major search operation. It did not take long before dozens of volunteers also volunteered to help search.
"When I arrived at the scene, I immediately went to the police and offered to help search," Emilietta's nephew Ben told The Brussels Times. "But they told me I could not do anything and they even implied that I should make sure not to get in their way."
In addition to Ben and other relatives, dozens of volunteers – up to 250 were counted on some days – spontaneously turned up in Maasmechelen to offer their help in the search, but there was very little coordination. This made it very unclear to police, relatives and volunteers alike where searches had already taken place.
Inspired by tracking apps
"I obviously cannot say for sure, but I keep wondering if we would not have found my aunt quicker if we could have been more coordinated," Ben said. From his background in IT, Ben explained that he was inspired by some family members who started indicating on online maps which areas they had already searched, or sharing which routes they had already walked via tracking apps like Strava.
However, a central map on which all the routes and areas searched were aggregated in real-time as simply and as quickly as possible, Ben found. "I searched for a long time, but no such app existed. So I decided to develop it myself."
He added that a prototype of the app can already be used via the website samenzoeken.app, and stressed that "all feedback is welcome" so the product can be developed fully as soon as possible, and hopefully help someone with it.
Emilia 'Emilietta' Chini disappeared from her home in late February. On the seventh day of searching, her body was found in the woods.
The concept is as simple as it is ingenious: everyone who is searching together opens the app or website, which records the route they walk – similar to what Google Maps does. At the same time, on that same map, everyone can also see the route others have already walked or are walking.
For Ben, it is incredibly important that the app remains free. "This is completely not-for-profit. There is no payment model and there never will be; I want to keep the threshold as low as possible so that anyone who needs the app can also use it without any problems."
Additionally, the app will also show a heat map so people can not only see each other's routes, but also how many people have already been to a particular place. "That way you will also know how thoroughly a particular area has already been searched, and whether a few or more than 20 people have already looked somewhere, for example."
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The app was built very quickly, in the two weeks after Emilietta's disappearance, but that certainly does not detract from its quality, Ben stressed: in theory, this app could allow thousands of people to search at once.
For him, building the app partly served as a way to process what happened and the work became a bit of therapy. "It is my way of dealing with this. It is too late for my aunt, but if this app can be a help to find someone else – even if it is just one person – then I can be happy that at least one good thing came out of this."
