Beaconing-based networking for localized information exchange in emergency management

Abstract

Currently, numerous proprietary communication technologies are used by emergency response personnel to ensure uninterrupted coordination and effective situational awareness, especially when the telecommunication infrastructure gets damaged or destroyed. Affected victims and bystanders, however, lack access to such equipment and are thus deprived of information and unable to reach for help.To ameliorate the situation, this work details a promising networking architecture that capitalizes on beaconing-based technology already available on existing smartphone devices to provide emergency communications. On top of the proposed architecture, intelligent algorithms are developed to support efficient and resilient message exchange for communication and localization among the affected victims; both of which are necessary for prompt and effective response. The paper first provides an analytical performance evaluation of the proposed approach. It then delves into the development and experimentation details that lead to the implementation of a practical application that can be installed and used in time of need. Real-world experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can sustain alert messaging for extended periods of time.