JOMTIENCQ, Thailand — When chaos threatens a group of non-combatants overseas, getting them to safety as quickly as possible often is up to servicemembers.

But transporting people means more than just herding them onto a plane.

Some evacuees may have critical medical conditions. Or a U.S. ambassador’s 5-year-old girl may be unwilling to leave her puppy behind.

To keep track of information during non-combatant evacuation operations, or “neos,” the United States uses its Neo Tracking Software.

On Sunday, members of the Thai Royal Marines and Thai Royal Navy got a glimpse at how that system works, ahead of Tuesday’s live evacuation exercise at Cobra Gold 2005’s headquarters in southern Thailand.

During an evacuation of non-combatants near the Cambodian border in recent years, the Thai armed forces used mainly cell phones to relay information, said Royal Thai Marines Capt. Somchai Choksanguan.

The U.S. tracking software “could be very useful for the Thai people in those types of operations,” Choksanguan said.

System hardware includes readily available commercial equipment like laptops and scanners.

During an emergency, an evacuee’s passport is read by a scanner, which can read any bar-coded passport from around the world. The program then allows the system user to input items like means of transportation and destination, as well as any special medical considerations.

And yes, it prints out bar codes for the family pets so they can be evacuated too, said program manager Darlene Robinson.

The information then is relayed via satellite to the Defense Manpower Data Center’s database in Monterey, Calif.

The system is a huge leap forward from the previous process and its heap of paperwork, Robinson said. “It’s a more efficient manner than the stubby pencil,” she said.

Every 30 minutes, the field system sends updated information to the database, which staff officers can access during an unfolding emergency.

That gives servicemembers in the field “the opportunity to do their jobs without the higher-ups having to call for information on items like how many people have been evacuated,” Robinson said.

The United States has used the tracking system since 2000, she said, adding that she first introduced this system to Thailand when she met with the Thai prime minister in 2003.

But Tuesday’s evacuation exercise represents a new step for the system, Robinson said: “It’s the first time where … we’re shadowing them to let them do the evacuation.”