I found a couple of geographic profiling programs law enforcement and the military use.

It's a bit of a stretch, but I wonder if the algorithms they use would work, or could be adapted for the big guy.

I feel that areas with the highest sighting densities would probably work best. Anyone have access to these?

http://www.tec.army.mil/publications/GeoProMilCap.pdf

http://www.geographicprofiling.com/rigel/R...%20-%20high.pdf

I'm convinced of it.



I certainly don't have access to them, but I don't think those particular program softwares are necessary. The theory is sound, and the application of the theory for concentrating sasquatch densities can be worked out on a piece of scratch paper.

The Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game published a series of atlas books in the early 1970's (no longer published) which had USGS maps marked up where particular species were found or concentrated at particular times of the year. There was even a fish atlas (now it's available on line, digitized), where streams that have anadromous fish runs are highlighted, coded for which species of salmon migrate up that particular stream, and showing how far up they run. Even small game and furbearers were cataloged and marked on the maps.

Forty years ago this was done without the benefit of computer software. It can be done again for this single possible species. Mangani has already done a great job with his maps. I think concentrating his effort further with a timing study (when the sightings occurred) along with perhaps concentrating reports into particular drainages is all that is needed to determine ideal search areas at ideal search times.

Over 95% of the time I have put into my project has gone to geolocating the reports, with only a little time spent on analysis. The primary reason being that I am just an amateur mapping hobbyist and lack the expensive GIS software required to perform sophisticated automated analysis. Belemnoid, on the other hand, is our resident GIS professional. Hopefully at some point he will find the time to do some more work along the lines suggested using the data I continue to compile. Of course the data is also available for anyone else to analyze, either with software or manually.

The problem with running these sorts of analyses is that the data isn't very uniform and in many cases not that detailed. Even something as simple as date isn't very good in the current data. Some reports mention the exact day of the year while others just say 'spring'.
Add to the date collection that to the fact that there are fewer people in the backcountry in the colder months and I'm not certain that it's worthwhile to try. I've actually run a few experiments with the BFRO data Mangani mapped trying to find patterns in seasonal sightings but nothing stood out. I've also tried a couple recently with a layer of degree of disruption from natural vegetation and that showed nothing. I think I even ran a summary with veg typ and it didn't show much other than veg types found in mountainous areas were slightly more likely to have sightings.
The only interesting maps I have produced are those showing density of reports. The Bluff Creek area in CA, the Mt. St Helens area in the PNW and eastern Ohio stood out as hot spots.