The Fog Makes Sense: Enabling Social Sensing Services With Limited Internet Connectivity

Social sensing services use humans as sensor carriers, sensor operators and sensors themselves in order to provide situation-awareness to applications. This promises to provide a multitude of benefits to the users, for example in the management of natural disasters or in community empowerment. However, current social sensing services depend on Internet connectivity since the services are deployed on central Cloud platforms. In many circumstances, Internet connectivity is constrained, for instance when a natural disaster causes Internet outages or when people do not have Internet access due to economical reasons. In this paper, we propose the emerging Fog Computing infrastructure to become a key-enabler of social sensing services in situations of constrained Internet connectivity. To this end, we develop a generic architecture and API of Fog-enabled social sensing services. We exemplify the usage of the proposed social sensing architecture on a number of concrete use cases from two different scenarios.Comment: Ruben Mayer, Harshit Gupta, Enrique Saurez, and Umakishore Ramachandran. 2017. The Fog Makes Sense: Enabling Social Sensing Services With Limited Internet Connectivity. In Proceedings of The 2nd International Workshop on Social Sensing, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 21 2017 (SocialSens'17), 6 page

Planning UAV Activities for Efficient User Coverage in Disaster Areas

Climate changes brought about by global warming as well as man-made environmental changes are often the cause of sever natural disasters. ICT, which is itself responsible for global warming due to its high carbon footprint, can play a role in alleviating the consequences of such hazards by providing reliable, resilient means of communication during a disaster crisis. In this paper, we explore the provision of wireless coverage through UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to complement, or replace, the traditional communication infrastructure. The use of UAVs is indeed crucial in emergency scenarios, as they allow for the quick and easy deployment of micro and pico cellular base stations where needed. We characterize the movements of UAVs and define an optimization problem to determine the best UAV coverage that maximizes the user throughput, while maintaining fairness across the different parts of the geographical area that has been affected by the disaster. To evaluate our strategy, we simulate a flooding in San Francisco and the car traffic resulting from people seeking safety on higher ground

Predicting topology propagation messages in mobile ad hoc networks: The value of history

This research was funded by the Spanish Government under contracts TIN2016-77836-C2-1-R,TIN2016-77836-C2-2-R, and DPI2016-77415-R, and by the Generalitat de Catalunya as Consolidated ResearchGroups 2017-SGR-688 and 2017-SGR-990.The mobile ad hoc communication in highly dynamic scenarios, like urban evacuations or search-and-rescue processes, plays a key role in coordinating the activities performed by the participants. Particularly, counting on message routing enhances the communication capability among these actors. Given the high dynamism of these networks and their low bandwidth, having mechanisms to predict the network topology offers several potential advantages; e.g., to reduce the number of topology propagation messages delivered through the network, the consumption of resources in the nodes and the amount of redundant retransmissions. Most strategies reported in the literature to perform these predictions are limited to support high mobility, consume a large amount of resources or require training. In order to contribute towards addressing that challenge, this paper presents a history-based predictor (HBP), which is a prediction strategy based on the assumption that some topological changes in these networks have happened before in the past, therefore, the predictor can take advantage of these patterns following a simple and low-cost approach. The article extends a previous proposal of the authors and evaluates its impact in highly mobile scenarios through the implementation of a real predictor for the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol. The use of this predictor, named OLSR-HBP, shows a reduction of 40–55% of topology propagation messages compared to the regular OLSR protocol. Moreover, the use of this predictor has a low cost in terms of CPU and memory consumption, and it can also be used with other routing protocols.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A report on the International Conference in Emergency Medicine and Public Health: Qatar 2016

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Mathai A, Farook S, Alinier G, Pathan S, Shariff M, 'A report on the International Conference in Emergency Medicine and Public Health: Qatar 2016', Journal of Paramedic Practice, 9(3): 98-101, March 2016.In recent years, Emergency Medicine (EM) has emerged as an important specialty in addressing numerous public health concerns such as management of chronic conditions, injuries, emerging health risks, and the delivery of clinical and preventive services. In Qatar and many other parts of the world, the Emergency Department (ED) serves as a point of entry into the healthcare system for a large percentage of the population. EDs often serve as potential sites of surveillance for various public health initiatives. Public health aims to prevent disease and their spread, promote health, and prolong life expectancy among the population as a whole. The critical interface between EM and Public Heath has been recognized in the literature as an important measure of the overall care given to the community (Bernstein et al, 1994; Bernstein and Haukoos, 2008).Peer reviewe

An Exploration of Organizational Capabilities for Emergency Response

In this paper, we examine emergency response through the theoretical lens of organizational capability literature. Specifically, we theorize the crucial roles of dynamic capability and improvisational capability in improving functional competence of emergency management, which in turn determines main response outcomes such as response effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction. We also discuss the likely value of IT leveraging capability in cultivating organizational dynamic capability and improvisational capability in emergency response. Based on emergency literature, we identify four imperative information technologies that are likely to cultivate IT leveraging capability in emergency management. Finally, we theorize the potential relationships between dynamic and improvisational capabilities. Expected findings of the paper will make contributions to the studies of emergency management and inform practitioners such as emergency technology developer and first responders

Shaping Societal Impact: between control and cooperation

In our modern society, the impact of large-scale safety and security incidents can be large and diverse. Yet, this societal impact is makeable and controllable to a limited extent. At best, the effect of concrete response actions is that the direct damage is somewhat reduced and that the recovery is accelerated. Proper crisis communication can make the biggest difference with respect to overall societal impact. We argue that crisis communication must strike a balance between a directive approach of chaos, command and control and a more empathic approach of continuity, coordination and cooperation. On the basis of a concrete case we analyze how crisis communication reflects the incident response approach and how societal impact is affected

mobile for emergencies m4em a cooperative software tool for emergency management operations

Abstract In serious emergencies, as in the case of floods and extreme weather conditions, where a substantial number of people are involved and over vast areas which may also involve different provinces, currently civil protection planning carries on emergency management operations within rigid schemes. A procedure that would be capable of handling events acquiring data continuously and developing real time solutions in a highly flexible manner has not yet been proposed. This research focuses on how the systematization of information systems and communication processes can improve the management of emergencies caused by extreme weather and climate events. The objectives of improved service, levels of safety and sustainability of the intervention in emergencies would be obtained through a centralized decision support system. The system and tools that are presented in this paper aim to respond to emergency issues dynamically responding to the dynamics of the events by taking advantage of an information system capable of sharing data, notifications, service orders, appeals for help, information on the status of the transport network and any other information. The system would provide decision support by acquiring information from smartphones and other nomadic devices; it would so provide exchange of information in real time on one or more virtual platforms among stakeholders and between them and the citizens. Substantially, the system is based on smartphone applications coupled with a central management emergency Decision Support System specifically built to make best use of the possibilities offered by the latest telematics systems and cooperative web and phone-based tools

Messaging Model for Emergency Communication

During an emergency, the on-scene communication takes place in the form of dispatch-mediated emergency messages. These messages, identified from the emergency communication reports, follow no standardized format, which render them useless for several other departments. This paper develops a messaging model, compliant with UCORE messaging framework, as follows: First, it determines the structure of the emergency messages. Second, it translates the emergency messages to a standardized format

A Study of Disaster Management System with View of Manet Application

In the modern era, Disaster Management has become an important field of study. With the advent of telecommunication system and their possible integration with the existing disaster management system, it is possible to minimize the after effects of disaster. In this paper we present a study of available and possible disaster management system based on wireless mobile telecommunication. In order to use such a system in the actual world security requirements such as availability, accountability, integrity and confidentiality must be ensured by the disaster management system

Cultural Implications of a Study of Police Communication With Minorities

Recent protests and riots around the globe have renewed the call for police reform. While police reforms could benefit the police and the public, police training in cultural awareness, racial biases, and communications may result in better and faster changes in police attitudes and approaches for working with minorities. This study suggests that non-police public safety personnel perceive a greater need for police training than the police. The study examined the police relationship and their communication with minority populations as perceived by Kosovo police (N=20) and other public safety personnel (N=24). Respondents answered a quantitative survey. Although not statistically significant, it appears that most police respondents didn’t recognize that cultural barriers exist between minorities and police, and they didn’t feel a strong need for cultural training. On the other hand, other public safety personnel showed greater support for cultural training, recognizing that cultural barriers do exist between police and minorities. Both groups agreed that trust is more important than speaking the same language when working with minorities