After the military, no group benefits more from GPS than public safety professionals. Fire/rescue teams, for example, consider GPS one of the best tools in their arsenal for plotting the most direct route to a fire or accident, determining the location of injured parties and affecting the successful rescue of individuals lost in wilderness settings.
Law enforcement agencies, large and small, are beginning to use GPS routinely thanks to built-in units appearing more frequently in departmental vehicles.
Wildlife conservation and management agencies use GPS units matter-of-factly to help determine wildlife population patterns, to track endangered species and to help locate possible sources of wildlife-related diseases.
Coincidentally, the use of GPS among outdoor enthusiasts such as hikers, hunters, fishermen, mountain bikers, snowmobilers, cross-country skiers, whitewater rafters and canoeists is skyrocketing. This might just be a boon to public safety pros. Preliminary studies indicate the number of emergency/rescue missions mounted per year in some of the nation's most popular wilderness recreation areas is beginning to drop. Some authorities ascribe this decrease to the increasing use of GPS by a growing number of outdoor adventurers.
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