Secured Categorization and Group Encounter Based Dissemination of Post Disaster Situational Data Using Peer-to-Peer Delay Tolerant Network

Abstract

Despite concerted efforts for relaying crucial situational information, disaster relief volunteers experience significant communication challenges owing to failures of critical infrastructure and longstanding power outages in disaster affected areas. Researchers have proposed the use of smart-phones, working in delay tolerant mode, for setting up a peer-to-peer network enabling post disaster communication. In such a network, volunteers, belonging to different rescue groups, relay situational messages containing needs and requirements of different categories to their respective relief camps. Delivery of such messages containing heterogeneous requirements to appropriate relief camps calls for on-the-fly categorization of messages according to their content. But, due to possible presence of malicious and unscrupulous entities in the network, content of sensitive situational messages cannot be made accessible even if that helps in categorization. To address this issue, we, in this paper, propose a secured message categorization technique that enables forwarder nodes to categorize messages without compromising on their confidentiality. Moreover, due to group dynamics and interaction pattern among groups, volunteers of a particular group encounter other volunteers of their own group (or groups offering allied services) more often than volunteers of other groups. Therefore, we also propose a forwarding scheme that routes messages, destined to a particular relief camp, through volunteers of that group or who encounter members of that group most frequently. This expedites the delivery of categorized messages to their appropriate destinations.