There are three fundamental theories that establish the bases of the search and rescue operations:
the search theory outlined by Koopman (1956a, b; 1957), the studies on how a target object moves in
the ocean (Washburn, 1980) and the weather forecast. The improvements in all these strongly depend
on the improvements in the computer science, but in a different way. For the search management a
robust and efficient information technology must be applied to store and exchange all the necessary
information. Near-real-time forecast of environmental conditions at a high-resolution level requires
fast computational routines and the assimilation of new available data during the operations.