A mobile architecture with dynamic message filtering for emergency response environments

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that contemporary smartphones act as effective message filtering systems in high traffic environments such as emergency response organisations, without relying on central servers. We have prototyped a mobile messaging application for Android smartphones in the Erlang language. We implemented filtering rules based on message origin, importance, and temporal validity, and tested the filtering capabilities of a smartphone in a realistic setup, that simulates traffic of tens of thousands of messages per minute, as in a large scale emergency response operation. The conclusion is that careful coding of the messaging application so that it operates in constant memory space and judicious use of the available display area can provide an effective portable message filtering for real-time, high-volume traffic, and the potential to reduce information overload for the emergency responder.