Mobile XMPP and cloud service collaboration: An alliance for flexible disaster management

Recent crises like the Fukushima incident in Japan show that there is a demand for flexible and easy-to-use communication and sensor systems to support post-disaster management (i.e. the organization of actions in the follow-up of disasters), especially when critical infrastructure is affected. This paper introduces a system design that combines mobile XMPP-based and sensor-equipped devices with the flexibility of cloud services. This combination provides the communication between the different involved parties (e.g. rescue forces) and enables a global view on sensed data through the use of cloud-based storage and analysis services. Along with a discussion about requirements and a description of appropriate solutions and initial evaluations, we present new insights on the practical appliance of XMPP and potential enhancements for XMPP-based real life collaboration applications in hybrid (ad hoc and infrastructure) network scenarios.