BDD: Dynamic Evolution of Smart-Phone Based Emergency Communications Network

在日本东北地震或美国卡特里娜飓风等长期持续的灾难中，紧急通信网络对于联系和帮助受影响的人们至关重要。由于智能手机无处不在，因此将其集成到应急通信网络中非常重要，该网络包括幸存的蜂窝网络和已部署的应急通信基础设施。随着灾难的展开，所有这些组成部分提供必要通信的能力各不相同。因此，必须持续监测和“调整”网络，以提供尽可能好的覆盖范围和通信能力。该项目探索如何通过WiFi系留技术将智能手机集群互联，并将其与已部署的应急网络集成。由于人口密度和智能手机的密度在受影响的地区可能会有很大差异，该项目将探索通过利用传感数据中的重叠/冗余来节省电池和其他智能手机资源的机制。该项目解决的另一个关键问题是随着灾害情况本身的演变，应急网络的演变。该项目分析了灾难期间从Twitter获得的数据，以深入了解网络应该如何发展。此外，该项目还研究了如何在最初部署移动接入点，然后再移动它们以调整网络以适应不断变化的灾难的需求。Twitter数据的分析涉及几个大数据挑战，包括对推文的分类、优先顺序和排序，因此解释和决策--预计仍将由人类完成--大大简化了。搭载各种传感器的智能手机的普及率迅速上升，这使它们成为灾难通信的理想选择。此外，由于技术要求不高和使用方便，Twitter已成为灾难期间首要的人类交流机制。该项目利用这些现象并将它们结合在一起，创建了一个灵活的灾难通信网络，该网络可以在快速接触受影响的人们并收集关键数据以迅速向他们提供所需援助方面提供显著的附加价值。作为美日联合计划的一部分，该项目将与美国天普大学和日本惠津大学的研究团队合作，开发与两国直接相关的技术。

Emergency communications networks are crucial for reaching out and helping affected people during long-persisting disasters such as the Tohoku earthquake in Japan or Hurricane Katrina in the US. Because of the ubiquitous availability of smartphones, it is important to integrate them into the emergency communications network consisting of both surviving cellular network and deployed emergency communications infrastructure. All these components vary in their ability to provide necessary communications as the disaster unfolds. It is therefore essential to continuously monitor and ``tune'' the network to provide the best possible coverage and communications capability. This project explores how to interconnect clusters of smartphones via WiFi tethering technology and integrate them with the deployed emergency network. Since the densities of people and hence of smartphones can vary substantially over the affected area, the project will explore mechanisms to conserve battery and other smartphone resources by exploiting overlap/redundancy in the sensed data. Another key issue addressed by the project is the evolution of the emergency network as the disaster situation itself evolves. The project analyzes data obtained from twitter during the disaster in order to get insights into how the network should evolve. Furthermore, the project examines how to deploy the mobile access points initially and later move them to tune the network to the needs of the evolving disaster. The analysis of twitter data involves several bigdata challenges including classification, prioritization, and ordering of tweets so the interpretation and decision making -- which is still expected to be done by humans -- is considerably simplified. The rapidly increasing penetration of smart phones that carry a wide array of sensors makes them ideal for disaster communications. In addition, twitter has established itself as the premier human communication mechanism during disasters owing to its modest technological requirements and ease of use. This project takes these phenomena and stitches them together to create an agile disaster communications network that can provide significant additional value in quickly reaching affected people and collecting crucial data for rushing the required assistance to them. As a part of US-Japan joint program, with research teams from Temple University in the United States and Aizu University in Japan, the project will develop technologies that will be of direct relevance to both countries.