Hybrid Approach for Disaster Recovery using P2P Communications in Android

Disaster recovery and rescuing are challenging tasks due to the unknown parameters related with the victims in disastrous situations. Existing surveillance systems have a degree of efficiency to inform the people through the use of various communication channels about disasters and their area of effect. However, the obscureness of the rescuing process has not been resolved in desirable levels, especially for the cases where the communication infrastructure can also be heavily damaged. Thanks to the prevalent use of mobile devices installed with variety of sensors, it is possible to aid the rescue process using the mobile hand sets. In this study, a framework which focuses on reducing the time spent to locate possible victims in a disastrous situation and to expedite the medical help is presented. For this purpose a system which introduces a proactive approach using Android, WiFi P2P technology, and local/central location database synchronization is proposed. In short, the system obtains the location of the users with fixed intervals to store in both local and centralized database for authorities to query for necessary information. The information related with the neighbouring mobile devices within a specific coverage area is also stored for the cases where only some of the devices are reachable due to disasters. With these features, it is possible to consider the system as a hybrid one where both reactive and proactive approaches are employed in order to reach the most up-to-date information available. This way, the probability of reaching up-to-date information about potential victims with no connection due to damaged infrastructure is increased, since each mobile node has information about the stations within its coverage area. In addition, the emergency medical information of the user are collected via a mobile application to accelerate the medical support time. Even though the system is designed to be used in any kind of disastrous situations, the case study included in this paper is for earthquakes only. Briefly, we developed a system that can enhance the rescuing and provide fast medical support by making use of the advancements in both mobile and wireless communication technologies.