Escalating post-disaster rescue missions through ad-hoc victim localization exploiting Wi-Fi networks

Abstract

The number of disasters, accidents, and casualties in disasters is increasing, however, technological advancement has yet to ripe benefits to emergency rescue operations. This contrast is even more prominent in the Global South. The consequences are a huge loss of wealth and resources, but more importantly, the loss of lives. Locating victims of disasters as quickly as possible while speeding up rescue operations can lessen these losses. Traditional approaches for effective victim localization and rescue often requires the establishment of additional infrastructure during the construction period. Which in the context of countries of the global south such as - Bangladesh, is not followed for most of the industrial and household constructions. In this paper, we conduct a study to better understand the challenges of victim localization in emergency rescue operations and to overcome them using “whatever” resources available at hand without needing prior infrastructure facilities and pre-calibration. We design and develop a solution for this purpose and deployed it in several emulated disaster-like scenarios. We analyze and discuss the results obtained from our experiments. Finally, we point out the design implications of an infrastructure-independent and extensive emergency rescue system.