RIVERSIDE — The Wright Brothers Institute, which supports Air Force research, is helping provide high-tech support to an organization of professional imaging analysts who volunteer time to help locate missing people.

The institute has opened its TecEdge Innovation and Collaboration Center, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, to the Volunteer Imagery Analysts for Search and Rescue (VIASAR). Members of the Dayton-based group, founded by imaging analyst Chris Rowley in 2008, help search and rescue organizations across the United States locate the missing.

At TecEdge, Rowley’s group has demonstrated a system it calls VIASAR-CAM that uses commercial equipment and software to gather digital pictures simultaneously with geographic data, then embeds them in a map database. That allows analysts to pinpoint the locations of objects they spot in the photos, Rowley said.

Students collaborating in research at TecEdge during the summer helped develop the VIASAR-CAM system.

TecEdge hosts researchers from the Air Force, universities and companies for collaborative efforts to develop technologies for military and commercial use.