Challenges of the Sensor Web for disaster management

Abstract

Sensor Web has been widely promoted and its application has evolved from original military usages to current ubiquitous civil and commercial applications. Its emergence has become a great strength to facilitate the Digital Earth concept. Although many Sensor Web applications and methods have been proposed to assist disaster management, they are not well suited to the unique features and application requirements of disaster management. Most researches focus on how to use the Sensor Web to monitor a certain phenomenon before a disaster happens and to provide early warning. However, there is a lack of study on the negative effects that a disaster may bring to the Sensor Web. For example, severe weather conditions, damaged infrastructure, and spatial isolation may directly make the Sensor Web out-of-service. Besides, disaster management is a complex subject and its domain knowledge needs to be clarified. In this paper, the domain of the disaster management is explored and its unique features are analyzed. Then the Sensor Web concept and its role in disaster management are explained. Afterwards, the challenges of the Sensor Web for disaster management and the possible solutions are discussed. Based on the above, we introduce a high-mobility emergency system to demonstrate a good solution of the Sensor Web for multi-purpose disaster management.