The SENSE-ME platform: Infrastructure-less smartphone connectivity and decentralized sensing for emergency management

摘要

In emergency scenarios, network coverage constitutes a fundamental requirement for both crisis management and rescue operations. However, coverage might not be sufficient to avoid chaotic crowd behaviours that could possibly occur when there is lack of accurate sensing data, and of distributed coordination among the main actors. In this paper, we investigate the role that Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) smartphones can play in emergency scenarios. Modern smartphones hide a great potential for emergency monitoring and management: (i) they are truly pervasive, (ii) they can establish peer-to-peer wireless links using short-range communication technologies, thus guaranteeing coverage even when fixed infrastructures are unavailable, and finally (iii) they can sense the environment through several embedded sensors. In order to maximally exploit such capabilities, we propose the SENSE-ME framework, which enables the creation of a spontaneous phonesensing platform, by providing integrated functionalities of opportunistic networking, mobile sensing, and distributed information processing.