A Fog-Based Emergency System for Smart Enhanced Living Environments

Ubiquitous computing paradigms, empowered by the fifth-generation networking and emerging smart ambient intelligence environments, could play a crucial role in creating better living environments for activity-challenged individuals, such as disabled or elderly people requiring constant care. Cloud computing has been an empowering force for this endeavor, although it raises several ethical, security, and user experience issues. This article presents a virtualized fog-based infrastructure for harvesting and managing distributed IT resources, shifting the entire cloud functionality to the network edge, and utilizing the cloud in an assistive manner to ensure system robustness. The infrastructure facilitates an ambient assisted-living emergency system that alerts nearby authorities when the target user leaves the identified home boundaries. It uses an outdoor positioning mechanism and emergency and Internet of Things communication protocols.