Comparing Strategies to Construct Local Disaster Recovery Networks

Abstract

Large-scale disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, damage communication infrastructure. The damaged infrastructure is then not able to provide the means for communication, which is important after a disaster. In this paper we simulate how survivors of a disaster can place smart phones or notebooks (hereafter called devices) as stationary relay chains to connect to other evacuation centers and Internet gateways to access the Internet. To determine the time necessary to set up the network and the number of evacuation centers connected to the Internet, we create a Poisson-based simulation of evacuation centers and Internet gateways. We then compare strategies how to interconnect evacuation centers and gateways. Our results show that among the strategies to place relay chains we tested, the most promising are: (1) Link every evacuation center to the closest gateway with a relay chain and (2) link each evacuation center to the 3 closest evacuation centers or gateways with relay chains. Both these strategies seem promising and should be tested in field tests in the next step. Together with step-by-step guides for disaster survivors this work will hopefully result in a smart phone and notebook application that lets untrained disaster survivors quickly set up their own recovery network in the disaster area.