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A Study of IoT-Based Post-Disaster Management
A Study of IoT-Based Post-Disaster Management
Abstract— In recent decades, serious natural or man-made disasters life-saving efforts and critical decision making. The trapped victims
such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and 9/11 have occurred with may have the following questions:
catastrophic consequences. To minimize the damage or loss of lives in Where can I get drinking water? Where can I get medical support?
the aftermath of a disaster, it is important that rescuers are able to track Can I use this road to reach in a safe place? How can I get shelter
the trapped victims and perform coordinated relief efforts from bad weather?
immediately. The traditional telecommunication system (e.g. a
landline or cellular network) may be either partially or entirely Many of these questions can be answered with access to the right
damaged by a disaster incident. Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising information [3]. During this critical time, rescue workers and
technology that can be used to solve some of the problems mentioned government officials coordinate their efforts and locate victims who
above. To date, the application of IoT in post-disaster management is may be injured or trapped, but relief efforts can be paralyzed or
still an unexplored problem. The objective of this paper is to study the severely delayed if the responding agencies are unable to communicate
IoT-based proposals for post-disaster management framework. It with one another. Despite having availability of several
discusses the key enabling technologies for IoT and provides an insight communication technologies the question is how do they perform in
into IoT-based post-disaster response and recovery. A new algorithm critical situations such as natural disasters and to what extend we can
(flowchart) for an ad hoc network formation linked to device-to-device rely on them? [2], [4]
communications towards a robust post-disaster management
framework is presented. Though a very good number of research efforts have been carried out
on IoT based applications such as smart home, smart cities, smart
Keywords—Disaster communication, Device to Device vehicles, traffic management, healthcare, and critical infrastructure
communication, Internet of Things, Public Safety. systems (such as power generation and distribution etc.), unfortunately
only a limited number of efforts have focused on the post-emergency
communication strategy. Here we articulate how IoT based D2D ad-
hoc networking can become an effective ways of communication
I. INTRODUCTION during such a disaster situation.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunami not only
left its devastating footprint into structural buildings and transport The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the existing IoT-
infrastructure but also in essential critical infrastructures such as power based work and highlight a possible solution for post-disaster response
grids, utility services and communication systems. Immediately after management. The main strength of this paper is the emphasis that IoT
the Haiti (Jan 2010), and Christchurch (Feb 2011) earthquakes, the can be a promising technology for disaster recovery.
Japan tsunami (March 2011) and the Nepal earthquakes (April 2015),
telecommunication systems were adversely impacted by electricity The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
outages, last mile connectivity loss, network traffic congestion etc. concept of IoT, device trends, and associated forecasts. In section III
These natural disaster not only collapsed the communications network we discuss the reasons for selecting IoT-based communications as a
but also severely hampered the emergency assistance for the people in helpful technology for disaster communications. Section IV provides
the affected areas by the relief teams. a summary of advanced research about D2D communication for
disaster management, and in section V we discuss our IoT-based
Due to climate change, among other causes, natural disasters have communication proposal. Finally, in section VI we present the
increased significantly over the years and that is not only costing us in conclusions and identify open research challenges to develop an IoT-
terms of assets/infrastructure damage but also in significant losses of based disaster resilient communication network.
human lives. While we cannot stop the occurrence of natural
calamities, with the help of modern technology one can save people’s II. BASIC CONCEPT OF IOT
lives more effectively. Communications systems during a natural The Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent communication paradigm that
disaster can be the difference between life and death for those in the envisions a future internet of interconnected devices. The term was
affected areas [1]. Despite having great advancement in coined in 1999 by Ashton Kevin and he referred the IoT as uniquely
communication technologies, lack of ingenuity in using its identifiable interoperable connected objects using radio-frequency
communication systems was prominent in Nepal’s earthquake in 2015. identification (RFID) technology. However, the definition of IoT
During that time Red Cross and leading companies such as Google Inc. became clearer when the International Telecommunication Union
and Facebook have tried to provide tools to connect affected people (ITU) released the "ITU Internet Report 2005 and recommended the
and rescue teams. However, due to great greater impact of power concept of the Internet of Things" during the World Summit on the
failure and huge last mile connectivity failure of communication Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on November 17, 2005 [5]. Later
networks prevented nearly all connection between rescue teams, in 2009, the ITU, the UN’s specialized agency for information and
people, family members and aid workers [2]. We all know that in such Communication technologies, defined Internet of things (IoT) as “A
disaster-stricken areas, the first 24-48 hours are crucial to assess the global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced
situation and to save lives. Communications become a vital means of services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on
In 2013, IERC (IoT European Research Center) stated that IoT is "A
dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring
capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication
protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical
attributes, and virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and
are seamlessly integrated into the information network" [9].
Figure 2: Dimension of the Internet of Things [5]
407
technologies like WiFi Direct and Bluetooth which are designed for
using only one- or two-hop communications. In this article authors
figure out how routing is important for multi-hop communications in
different technologies and finally present the future prospects of the
relay by using smartphones as D2D communication devices. This can
become a good solution to exchange message between any two devices
regardless of the type of routing technology adopted. In another
research [31], it is shown how the increment of hop count can
effectively enhance the capacity of a D2D system. This is because
increasing relay hops can effectively reduce the transmit power of each
UE, which also reduces the interference between D2D and cellular
users of functional and non-functional areas.
408
may easily be embedded with high processing and computational couple of days (iii) computation power and safety from physical
chipsets, and hence may communicate with various networks damage can be further improved.
regardless of the various technologies used. For example
- A working Base Stations (BS) of a cellular network (by luck
or located nearest to the disaster area)
- A working wired connection
- A device capable to communicate with satellite
- Rescue personnel who may use a conventional public safety
network etc.
409
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