Two years ago, an autistic teenager was found by the Fairfield Police Department unable to communicate and with no form of identification.

After failing to identify the young man, police officers took the teen to a local hospital to ensure his safety. They were faced with no other option than to await a 911 call from the young man's family, Fairfield-Sun.com reported. That call came hours later when the unidentified teen's mother woke up and found her son missing.

Incidents like these have prompted Fairfield police to team up with Fairfield University's School of Engineering to create a new missing persons software tool, The SafeReturn Network.

"It was at this time that I came to the realization that a program such as SafeReturn needed to be created and implemented in Fairfield," Officer Michael C. Stahl, a Fairfield University alumnus, who remembers the night that laid the groundwork for the tool, told Fairfield-Sun.com.

SafeReturn is a computer database in which Fairfield residents" may log information about loved ones with autism, dementia, Alzheimer's and other individuals who may be prone to wandering," Fairfield-Sun reported. The network also contains the necessary information police need in the case Amber or Silver Alerts need to be activated.

With the software, emergency personnel will be able to search for individuals using a variety of variables such as name, physical characteristics and age.

If they encounter someone who is autistic or unable to communicate, emergency personnel are able to open a gallery of photographs and filter those photos based on physical characteristics and subsequently match a photo with the person standing in front of them. Then they will be able to retrieve the individual's profile and emergency contact information.

"The system is deployed inside of the [Fairfield Police Department] Intranet server and all information submitted by an individual's caretaker is securely stored in a database made searchable and viewable in profile form either from an officer's desk at headquarters or in the officer's patrol car computer," Dr. Wook-Sung Yoo, chair of software engineering, told Fairfield-Sun.

The Fairfield Police Department responds to nearly 40,000 calls for services annually, according to Stahl. As a result, officers often come in contact with individuals with special needs along with those suffering from memory impairing conditions.

"[The SafeReturn Network] provides peace of mind to family and friends knowing that their local police have the tools necessary to locate their loved ones, should they wander from home, and reunite them," Stahl added.