“increase your searchability”

Assorted Asides

It may be more appropriate to call this findability (ability to be found; ability to be successfully searched-for) rather than searchability (ability to be searched; ability to find out about), though the distinction is not at all consistent.

See: “What is the equivalent of SEO, but for navigating the physical built environment?”

Here is Wikipedia: RECCO

There is follow-on discussion about the actual use of the devices in emergency situations, with some commentators asserting it is more a body recovery tool than a rescue tool. These particular devices are passive, meant to reflect radar. These are distinct from avalanche transceivers (or avalanche beacons), which send and receive radio signals.

The comments on Reddit include assertions that the passive reflectors can interfere with avalanche beacons (this makes me think of interference in web search: search noise or search pollution, where some topics are particularly difficult to disambiguate in web search).

Avalanche search & recovery is an instance where energy is also focused on avoiding the need for a particular search in the first place. This energy may be exerted by various parties, and includes: public education to increase awareness of risks and resources, searching in advance of venturing out in order to avoid areas of heightened danger, techniques to reduce the danger through avalanche blasting or barriers, and avalanche airbags.

The passive radar reflectors can be grouped alongside similar tools or practices for finding or identifying things and people in physical environments (including for avoidance). Here is an incomplete list, for example: Emergency locator beacons (inclusive of the avalanche beacons); tools in warfare for avoiding “friendly fire” (like an IR flag); a bright safety flag I attach to my running stroller; reflectors on bicycles (u/a-nonie-muz: “They allow vehicle drivers to track the presence and movements of cyclists in their immediate surroundings.”) and cars; “location monitoring devices” (including Apple AirTags, Tile trackers, Lojack systems, and GPS trackers; along with user interfaces like Find My Phone & Find My Friends¹); whistles; signalling mirrors; flares “used for distress signaling, illumination, or defensive countermeasures in civilian and military applications”; blazes, including the dragons used in trail running (and urine marks); QR codes; safety color coding; social searching like on r/whatisthisthing; and making noise for “keeping the mountain lions away”. (Other techniques for deconfliction or finding include conveying information prior to a search or search-for-not—verify the absence—(“defining areas of operation” or meeting points) or changing the built environment for signalling or friction (signage and sidewalks).)