Alternative Opportunistic Alert Diffusion to Support Infrastructure Failure during Disasters.

Farouk Mezghani,Nathalie Mitton

doi:10.3390/s17102370

Farouk Mezghani, Nathalie Mitton

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s17102370

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Abstract

Opportunistic communications present a promising solution for disaster network recovery in emergency situations such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, where infrastructure might be destroyed. Some recent works in the literature have proposed opportunistic-based disaster recovery solutions, but they have omitted the consideration of mobile devices that come with different network technologies and various initial energy levels. This work presents COPE, an energy-aware Cooperative OPportunistic alErt diffusion scheme for trapped survivors to use during disaster scenarios to report their position and ease their rescue operation. It aims to maintain mobile devices functional for as long as possible for maximum network coverage until reaching proximate rescuers. COPE deals with mobile devices that come with an assortment of networks and aims to perform systematic network interface selection. Furthermore, it considers mobile devices with various energy levels and allows low-energy nodes to hold their charge for longer time with the support of high-energy nodes. A proof-of-concept implementation has been performed to study the doability and efficiency of COPE, and to highlight the lessons learned.

Highlights

During disaster scenarios such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, communication is needed for rescue operations of trapped survivors
Existing works in the literature [19] have tested the clock drift on different smartphones and results have shown that the clock skew is around one to two seconds per day, which is convenient for our system model since a rescue operation might take few hours
This work investigates the alert diffusion in disaster scenarios. It proposes COPE, a novel cooperative alert diffusion scheme that leverages multiple network technologies integrated in mobile devices and takes various energy levels into account

Summary

Introduction

During disaster scenarios such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, communication is needed for rescue operations of trapped survivors. Network infrastructure might be destroyed, mobile devices used daily by everyone (e.g., smartphones) are the most helpful communication tools, and can assist several disaster recovery services in several ways [3,4]. Trapped survivors can use their mobile devices and communicate with rescuers using short-range communications to report their position, to make their rescue operation quicker and more efficient. Devices with various initial power levels, making low-energy nodes batteries drain quickly, have not been taken into account. This work aims to design an opportunistic alert diffusion scheme for a disaster recovery scenario that exploits the multiple network technologies available in mobile devices and takes various battery levels into account.

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