Community-Based Localized Disaster Response through Temporary Social Overlay Networks

Disaster management is a critical component to secure citizen’s safety. From experiences with recent disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes, we can easily find evidence that shows an urgent need for effective disaster management systems. Most of existing disaster-responsive systems have focused on long-term needs that require comprehensive data analysis and continuous disaster recovery in a centralized manner. For more effective responses, however, a disaster response system must address not only long-term needs but also short-term needs that require instant data sharing and cooperation between people and smart devices nearby. Towards this goal, in this paper, we propose the Hybrid Disaster Response System (HyDRS) that consists of localized communities dealing with short-term needs and a centralized disaster management system addressing long-term needs. By using the HyDRS, distressed people are able to immediately obtain vital information from people and sensors nearby and cooperate with each other within localized communities even when a centralized system is unavailable.