Alvaro Monares

Modeling IoT-Based Solutions Using Human-Centric Wireless Sensor Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) has inspired solutions that are already available for addressing problems in various application scenarios, such as healthcare, security, emergency support and tourism. However, there is no clear approach to modeling these systems and envisioning their capabilities at the design time. Therefore, the process of designing these systems is ad hoc and its real impact is evaluated once the solution is already implemented, which is risky and expensive. This paper proposes a modeling approach that uses human-centric wireless sensor networks to specify and evaluate models of IoT-based systems at the time of design, avoiding the need to spend time and effort on early implementations of immature designs. It allows designers to focus on the system design, leaving the implementation decisions for a next phase. The article illustrates the usefulness of this proposal through a running example, showing the design of an IoT-based solution to support the first responses during medium-sized or large urban incidents. The case study used in the proposal evaluation is based on a real train crash. The proposed modeling approach can be used to design IoT-based systems for other application scenarios, e.g., to support security operatives or monitor chronic patients in their homes.

Improving the support to decision making in medium-sized urban emergencies

A firefighter Incident Commander (IC) is responsible for organizing, coordinating and making decisions in most urban emergencies, such as fires and car crashes. The lack of supporting information and the limitations of the radio systems push the IC to make decisions with little or no information; therefore his actions tend to be improvisations. This article presents a decision support system that allows the IC to address medium-sized urban emergencies, providing him on-demand information and also recommendations to address the event. The system was evaluated by comparing the information that it provides, with those required by the IC during past emergencies. The system was also evaluated by firefighters commanders during a focus group session. The obtained results indicate that the proposed system is able to support the decision making process performed by IC during medium-sized emergencies.

Improving the initial response process in urban emergencies

Growing population and service interconnection make urban areas increasingly vulnerable to emergency situations. Although the firefighting response process plays a key role in most urban emergencies, it has remained essentially unchanged in the past decades; therefore it has several limitations to coordinate effective and efficient response activities. This paper studies the firefighting initial response process in order to measure, understand and improve it. The study involved a literature review, interviews with firefighting personnel and the analysis of 66 urban emergencies in the city of Santiago (Chile). Based on the obtained results this article proposes an emergency coordination system to improve the initial response process in urban emergencies. In order to realize the impact of the proposed system on the initial response process, a simulation based on past emergencies is presented and discussed.

A simple and portable command post to coordinate search and rescue activities in disaster relief efforts

The lack of communication channels and support information can make the critical search and rescue of survivors after a disaster an ineffective process resulting in losses. This work addresses this problem by proposing a simple and portable command post application based on mobile devices and adhoc networks. The application provides support to communication and collaboration aiming to speed up the SAR process. The system architecture and some implementation issues are also presented.

Modeling interactions in human-centric wireless sensor networks

The recent growth of social networking and sensing applications has enabled people to perform crowd computing. In turn, this activity has opened several opportunities to address peoples needs in various application areas, such as tourism, security, entertainment and emergency response. However, the design of these applications has also brought several challenges to software designers. Since users of these systems interact among them in heterogeneous physical scenarios, their interactions should be formally considered in the design of these applications in order to determine whether or not the services embedded in the system are suitable to support those interactions. The lack of guidelines to address this modeling issue not only jeopardizes the suitability of these applications, but also implies the services provided by the system can be evaluated only after implementation, which is clearly risky and expensive. This article proposes an initial modeling language that allows software designers to address this challenge through the representation of the interaction among users of a system. The interaction model represented using the proposed language allows designers to evaluate, at the design time, the information flow and the availability of interaction supporting services in the system. The usability and usefulness of the proposal are shown using a running example.

A mobile collaborative application to reduce the radio traffic in urban emergencies

A firefighter Incident Commander (IC) is responsible for organizing, coordinating and decision-making in most urban emergencies such as fires or car crashes. To accomplish this task, the IC uses a couple of radio channels for communicating with the Alarms Center (AC, also known as Emergency Operation Center) and the resources assigned to such emergency. Although radio-based communication has brought several benefits, it also has drawbacks for sending, sharing, updating, and saving geospatial information. This paper presents the extension to a mobile collaborative tool called “MobileMap”, which complements the radio system. The tool helps to increase the availability of the most frequently requested information for the IC and firefighters in the field. The system design was based on a study of relevant information that the IC requires on-site for an efficient and effective decision-making. The results highlight that using MobileMap makes it possible to reduce the radio channels usage time by approximately 20%. Furthermore, the information shared through the application improves the IC decision-making process during an emergency.

A Decision Support System for Medium-Sized Emergencies

The decisions made by the operation commander in emergency situations should be made quickly to save lives. To avoid late or bad decisions, the commander must construct a situational awareness. The irregular arrival flow of information, uncertainty, information overload and lack of persistence are the main factors that hinder this task. To minimize these effects we propose an architecture composed of mobile devices and a decision support system to be used in the command post. The main point in the system design is the cognitive overload. Therefore, heuristics about the usage of the information by experienced commanders were elicited and implemented.

Visualization of relevant information on mobile devices for emergency situations

In recent years it has been identified the need to use mobile technology in urban emergency response process, due to the importance of having information to make decisions in these scenarios. The data visualization in small mobile devices, such as PDAs or smartphones, is a critical aspect to make appropriate and on time decisions. This criticality is given particularly by the small-size of its screen and the type of information to show, which is usually geographically. This article presents a strategy to select and display the most relevant “Points of Interest” on a digital map, according to the emergency influence area. This strategy was implemented on the MobileMap tool, and then it was evaluated through simulated emergency situations, in which participated Firefighters Commanders of different Chilean Companies.

Increasing shared information availability during urban emergency responses

Firefighters are responsible for dealing with several types of urban emergencies, such as fires, car crashes and explosions. The participants in an emergency response process require shared information to make effective, on-time decisions, and to coordinate their activities. The information sharing process is currently performed using message exchange through a radio system. However, limitations in this communication medium jeopardize information availability during the emergency. This may produce undesirable situations, such as lack of coordination among firefighters or wrong decisions due to lack of supporting information. As a way to deal with the problem, this article proposes a computer-based system, which complements the radio system. The system helps increase the availability of the information that is most frequently requested by firefighters in the field, identified by a study of 65 past emergencies. The results of a preliminary evaluation indicate the solution is able to ensure the availability of at least the 30% of the most requested information during an emergency.

Understanding the Interaction Support for Mobile Work in an Emergency Room

Typically mobile and ubiquitous software applications provide services to mobile workers to help them increase their performance, effectiveness and eventually the satisfaction while doing their jobs. These services are directly related to the characterization of the activities to be supported. Based on such a characterization the designers of these solutions can envision the services that should be provided by the new system. Few guidelines are available to characterize mobile activities from an IT support point of view, therefore the designers have to guess the services to be embedded in these solutions. This paper provides a first step to address such a problem, identifying the context variables that characterize the mobile activities. Moreover, an ontology of activity characteristics and some design guidelines are provided to determine which supporting services can be used to address activities according to their characteristics. This proposal was conceived based on the empirical observation of the work performed by the medical personnel at an emergency room of a public hospital. Further analysis is required to generalize this proposal, in order to address mobile work in other scenarios.