Eleana Asimakopoulou

A survey on multihop ad hoc networks for disaster response scenarios

Disastrous events are one of the most challenging applications of multihop ad hoc networks due to possible damages of existing telecommunication infrastructure. The deployed cellular communication infrastructure might be partially or completely destroyed after a natural disaster. Multihop ad hoc communication is an interesting alternative to deal with the lack of communications in disaster scenarios. They have evolved since their origin, leading to different ad hoc paradigms such as MANETs, VANETs, DTNs, or WSNs. This paper presents a survey on multihop ad hoc network paradigms for disaster scenarios. It highlights their applicability to important tasks in disaster relief operations. More specifically, the paper reviews the main work found in the literature, which employed ad hoc networks in disaster scenarios. In addition, it discusses the open challenges and the future research directions for each different ad hoc paradigm.

The Big Picture, from Grids and Clouds to Crowds: A Data Collective Computational Intelligence Case Proposal for Managing Disasters

Much work is underway within the broad next generation technologies community on issues associated with the development of services to foster collaboration via the integration of distributed and heterogeneous data systems and technologies. Various technology-driven paradigms have emerged, including Web Services, Web 2.0, Pervasive, Grids and Cloud Computing. Recently, some new paradigms have emerged, including Situated Computing and Crowd Sourcing. In this exploratory paper, we aim to be visionary, thus, we offer an overview highlighting relationships between these paradigms, the goal is to present how these fit into the broader picture of IT. More specifically, to discuss how these could help coin and prompt future direction of their usage (integration) in various real-world scenarios. A disaster management scenario is presented to illustrate the big picture’s model architecture, as well as briefly discuss the potential impact resulting from the collective computational intelligence approach.

A next generation emerging technologies roadmap for enabling collective computational intelligence in disaster management

Much work is underway within the broad next generation emerging technologies community on issues associated with the development of services to foster synergies and collaboration via the integration of distributed and heterogeneous resources, systems and technologies. In previous works, we have discussed how these could help coin and prompt future direction of their fit-to-purpose use in various real-world scenarios including but not limited to disaster management, healthcare, vehicular networking and knowledge cities. In this exploratory paper, we brief and then build upon our previous works and specifically, we present a roadmap highlighting the possible use of next generation emerging technologies for enabling collective computational intelligence in managing disaster situations. A relevant scenario is used to illustrate the model architecture, as well as to detail the proposed roadmap.

Modelling and assessing ad hoc Networks in disaster scenarios

Ad hoc networks have been proved to be suitable for disaster scenarios since any infrastructure needs to be deployed in order to establish a wireless network. Routing protocols play an important role in the performance of mobile ad hoc networks. Routing protocols are responsible for deciding how the information is going to move through the network. Although one paramount parameter of ad hoc networks is the mobility of nodes, little effort has been made to evaluate the performance of mobile ad hoc networks under mobility models where the movements of rescue teams during evacuating operations are modelled. The objective of this paper is to evaluate real case disaster scenarios in terms of performance using several well-known routing protocols metrics.

An evolutionary computation approach for optimizing connectivity in disaster response scenarios

This article presents an evolutionary computation approach for increasing connectivity in disaster scenarios. Connectivity is considered to be of critical importance in disaster scenarios due to constrained and mobile conditions. We propose the deployment of a number of auxiliary static nodes whose purpose is to increase the reachability of broadcast emergency packets among the nodes which are participating in the disaster scenario. These nodes represent people and vehicles acting in rescue operations. The main goal is to find the optimum positions for the auxiliary nodes, reinforcing the communications in points where certain lack of connectivity is found. These points will depend on the movements of the rescue teams, which are influenced by tactical reasons. Due to the complexity of the problem and the number of parameters to be considered, a genetic algorithm combined with the network simulator NS-2 is proposed to find the optimum positions of the auxiliary nodes. Specifically, NS-2 is used to model the communication layers and provide the fitness function guiding the genetic search. The proposed approach has been tested using the disaster mobility model included in the motion generator BonnMotion. The simulation results obtained demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and illustrate its applicability in other scenarios where lack of connectivity is evident.

Advanced ICTs for Disaster Management and Threat Detection: Collaborative and Distributed Frameworks

The Medical Information System (MedISys) is a fully automatic 24/7 public health surveillance system monitoring human and animal infectious diseases and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats in open-source media. In this article, we explain the technology behind MedISys, deJens P. Linge Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Ralf Steinberger Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Flavio Fuart Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Stefano Bucci Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Jenya Belyaeva Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Monica Gemo Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Delilah Al-Khudhairy Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy Roman Yangarber University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, Finland Erik van der Goot Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen Global Security and Crisis Management Unit, Italy DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-987-3.ch009In the developed world, an ever better and finer understanding of the processes leading to natural hazards is expected. This is in part achieved using the invaluable tool of numerical modeling, which offers the possibility of applying scenarios to a given situation. This in turn leads to a dramatic increase in the complexity of the processes that the scientific community wants to simulate. A numerical model is becoming more and more like a galaxy of various sub-process models, each with their own numerical characteristics. The traditional approach to High Performance Computing (HPC) can hardly face this challenge without rethinking its paradigms. A possible evolution would be to move away from the Single Program, Multi Data (SPMD) approach and towards an approach that leverages the well known Object Oriented approach. This evolution is at the foundation of the POP parallel programming model that is presented here, as well as its C++ implementation, POP-C++.Disaster management is a dynamic and fluid area, which requires the involvement of expertise from different authorities and organizations. There is a need to prepare and plan in advance actions in response to disaster related events in order to support sustainable livelihood by protecting lives, property and the environment. Advanced ICTs for Disaster Management and Threat Detection: Collaborative and Distributed Frameworks demonstrates how strategies and state-of-the-art ICT have and/or could be applied to serve as a vehicle to advance disaster management approaches, decisions and practices. This book provides both a conceptual and practical guidance to disaster management while also identifying and developing effective and efficient approaches, mechanisms, and systems using emerging technologies to support an effective operation. This state-of-the-art reference collection attempts to prompt the future direction for disaster managers to identify applicable theories and practices in order to mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from various foreseen and/or unforeseen disasters.

Interconnectedness of Complex Systems of Internet of Things through Social Network Analysis for Disaster Management

This visionary paper presents the Internet of Things paradigm in terms of interdependent dynamic dimensions of objects and their properties. Given that in its current state Internet of Things (IoT) has been viewed as a paradigm based on hierarchical distribution of objects, evaluation of the dynamic nature of the hierarchical structures faces challenges in its evaluation and analysis. Within this in mind, our focus is on the area of complex social networks and the dynamic social network construction within the context of IoT. This is by highlighting and addressing the tagging issues of the objects to the real-world domain such as in disaster management, these are in relation to their hierarchies and interrelation within the context of social network analysis. Specifically, we suggest to investigate and deepen the understanding of the IoT paradigm through the application of social network analysis as a method for interlinking objects -- and thus, propose ways in which IoT could be subsequently interlinked and analyzed through social network analysis approach - which provides possibilities for linking of the objects, while extends it into real-world domain. With this in mind, we present few applications and key characteristics of disaster management and the social networking analysis approach, as well as, foreseen benefits of its application in the IoT domain.

Evaluation of Ad Hoc Networks in Disaster Scenarios

Ad hoc networks have been proved to be suitable for disaster scenarios since any infrastructure need to be deployed in order to establish a wireless network. Routing protocols play an important role in the performance of mobile ad hoc networks. Routing protocols are responsible for deciding how the information is going to move through the network. Although one paramount parameter of ad hoc networks is the mobility of nodes, little effort has been made to evaluate the performance of mobile ad hoc networks under mobility models which model the movements of rescue teams during evacuating operations. The objective of this paper is to evaluate real case disaster scenarios in terms of performance using several well-known routing protocols metrics.

Multi-objective performance optimization of a probabilistic similarity/dissimilarity-based broadcasting scheme for mobile ad hoc networks in disaster response scenarios

Communications among crewmembers in rescue teams and among victims are crucial to relieve the consequences and damages of a disaster situation. A common communication system for establishing real time communications between the elements (victims, crewmembers, people living in the vicinity of the disaster scenario, among others) involved in a disaster scenario is required. Ad hoc networks have been envisioned for years as a possible solution. They allow users to establish decentralized communications quickly and using common devices like mobile phones. Broadcasting is the main mechanism used to disseminate information in all-to-all fashion in ad hoc networks. The objective of this paper is to optimize a broadcasting scheme based on similarity/dissimilarity coefficient designed for disaster response scenarios through a multi-objective optimization problem in which several performance metrics such as reachability, number of retransmissions and delay are optimized simultaneously.

Towards Simulating the Internet of Things

There is an increasing interest in Internet of Things (IoT) and healthcare is considered to be one of the most common applications of it. Using the IoT paradigm, various devices including smart-phones and sensor-embedded healthcare applications can be used for monitoring health. In this study, we model an IoT use case scenario with regard to monitoring the activities associated with health. In particular, we present our use case using the SimIoT extended simulation toolkit to demonstrate the various functions and the interactions occurring within the IoT-enabled healthcare context. Specifically, we extend the functionalities of the SimIC simulation toolkit by adding the IoT layer that incorporates IoT devices which generated data for the private clouds. We focus our experimental analysis from the perspective of cloud performance to illustrate the turnaround and make span of the system.