Smart disaster response through localized short-term cooperation

Abstract

As the information and communication technology (ICT) has advanced, research on smart cities that take advantage of ICT has been extensively conducted to improve resource management and enhance citizen’s quality of life. Disaster management is a critical component in smart cities to secure citizen’s safety. From experiences with recent disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes, we can easily find evidence that shows an urgent need for intelligent disaster management systems. In a disaster situation, a disaster response system must address not only long-term needs that require continuous disaster recovery, but also short-term needs that require ephemeral cooperation between people and smart devices nearby. However, existing disaster-responsive applications have been based on pre-established long-term relationships and focused on communication among human users. To address the limitation of disaster management, in this paper, the smart disaster response system (DRS) is proposed. The Smart DRS allows connectivity among users and sensing devices with short-term relationships based on geographical location within. The approach allows effective sharing of disaster information and immediate cooperation within communities in a manner that reconciles with requirements of security and privacy.