Cyber Handyman and Nursing for Humanitarian Services and Disaster Relief

Abstract

Calamities cause immense damage to the lives and properties; emergency management and humanitarian support have always been a challenge in the disaster-hit areas due to deficiency of skilled workforce and increase in demand for available experts. Not all the volunteers have the required technical expertise to handle those situations, utilizing the services of the remotely located experts to enhance the skills of the volunteers can help them to handle the situations efficiently. The existing communication mechanisms do not have the capabilities required for collaborating people over physical tasks, which is crucial during the emergency situations. In this paper, we present two novel remote collaboration systems, Cyber-Handyman and Cyber-Nurse using which the less-trained and inexperienced aid workers can enhance their capabilities with the help from remote experts. These units will be deployed in the disaster sites, and the remote experts access and control the sensors on it to guide the aid workers or the victims. The efficiency of the collaboration over physical tasks, which is vital during emergency situations, depends on the complexity of the protocols utilized and the efficiency of the collaboration system. We also propose a methodology to evaluate the protocol complexity and efficiency of the system. Our experiments and results show that with our collaboration system a remote helper can successfully guide the workers in performing a physical task with minimum difficulty.