Early Alert Infrastructure for Earthquakes Through Mobile Technologies, Web, and Cloud Computing

Abstract

During these last years, the use of mobile and Web technologies around the world has reached an increasing impact in society and people’s lifestyle, including different places and social classes. Ecuador is a South American country with intense seismic and volcanic activity, where current politics and contingency plans are not optimal, making it necessary to think about a more efficient solution to mitigate this risks and consequences. Considering the growing amount of mobile device users, the reach of mobile networks and combining the risk of situation in which many countries are alike, such as Ecuador. This paper sets the design and development of an early alert infrastructure, through the use of new technologies such as Cloud computing, geolocation, pervasive computing, and Web services. The implemented architecture, and the provided Web service has the objective to improve the evacuation logistic and subsequent rescue work after the occurrence of a natural disaster. The results obtained demonstrate that the use of the system improves to a good extent of the evacuation by reaching to a safe location.