EAGER: Creating a Community Infrastructure for Interoperable Emergency Connectivity

美国的许多地区都受到季节性和周期性自然灾害的影响，如洪水、地震和飓风，而所有地区都可能经历导致通信中断的技术或人为事件。灾难发生后，专业的紧急救援人员必须全面了解社区的损害情况，以便优先分配资源以拯救生命和保护环境。如果不能准确地了解社区状况，可能会导致对稀缺的反应和救援资源的分配无效。目前用于向公众收集日常应急信息的技术，如911电话和社交媒体，往往会因灾难而中断。这种影响可能在事件发生后持续数天。能够协调应急反应和社区抗灾能力的关键因素之一是，居民、企业、学校和医院等社区成员向公共安全服务部门迅速通报社区情况，如被困人员的位置、倒塌的建筑物、火灾和危险材料事故、公路损坏和交通拥堵。整合和增强现有技术的强大和有弹性的通信系统是解决方案。圣何塞市已经认识到灾后信息缺失的可能性，这可以通过增加不同社区元素与公共安全通信的连通性来解决。认识到整个社区都有私人拥有的智能手机，市政府正在寻求一种信息收集和传播解决方案，使智能手机用户即使在灾害情况下也能与公共安全服务部门保持联系。圣何塞州立大学与圣何塞应急服务办公室（OES）合作，建议开发一种新方法，以保持居民与公共安全服务的联系。拟议的连接和网络技术将使公民与重要服务和信息保持联系，并允许他们向公共安全机构提供灾害评估信息。该项目还将为应急人员创建一个云仪表板，并创建一个全面的社区状况视图，从而实现有效的应急响应。该原型系统将使该市的公共安全机构能够优先考虑紧急响应需求并快速响应，并最大限度地减少对圣何塞市及其社区和经济的灾难性影响。破坏性事件在美国的普遍存在，使得弹性通信解决方案的发展势在必行。与圣何塞市的现有合作为具有全国应用潜力的新技术应用提供了一个现实世界的合作伙伴和测试平台。随着气候变化、风暴加剧、海平面上升、电网老化和社会混乱的增加，为可靠的通信连接创建一个有弹性和可访问的解决方案至关重要。探索性研究的早期概念拨款（EAGER）将解决必须解决的关键挑战，以实现这一及时性，并提供战略和系统解决方案，以促进应急意识、管理和准备。最后，这个项目中的所有代码和数据都将公开发布，以支持未来的研究、开发和培训。灾害的第一反应者需要全面了解社区的状况，以便准确评估居民的状况，并组织现有资源来拯救生命、保护环境和防止社区进一步受到损害。在正常情况下，公共安全服务依靠911电话和社交媒体从居民那里收集有关社区状况的信息。然而，在灾难条件下，这些正常的通信方式将被中断，包括固定电话和手机，互联网连接和电力。在这种情况下，必须有新的系统来替代失去的连接，允许居民连接到公共安全应答点，并允许紧急行动中心收集和汇总跨部门的关键信息，以确保救生行动迅速进行。管理易受灾社区风险的解决方案包括将现有技术、应用、数据和电子服务整合到可持续网络中，即使在灾难性事件中也能支持紧急通信。本研究建议开发一种社区基础设施，用于可互操作的应急连接，该基础设施可以在恶劣条件下运行，提供自己的电力，并在整个社区和跨司法管辖区建立联系。该项目将在当地社区部署具有多模态通信模块以及外部远程无线电的边缘设备。在远程边缘设备之上提出的弹性和参与式网络框架将实现协作通信和参与式感知。为了解决当前城市应急响应人员控制和自动化远程边缘设备能力方面的不足，该项目将现有的云编排框架扩展到与网络媒体无关的边缘设备。对于这个示范项目，部署在圣何塞市的中央云？s应急运营中心将控制远程边缘设备，并负责远程边缘设备的弹性质量测试、自动验证、灾害评估、资源分配和自动化。

Many areas of the United States are subject to seasonal and cyclical natural disasters like floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, while all areas may experience technological or human-caused events leading to communications disruptions. Following a disaster, it is essential for professional emergency responders to have a comprehensive understanding of the damage in the community in order to prioritize resources to save lives and protect the environment. Failure to develop an accurate picture of community conditions may lead to ineffective allocation of scarce response and rescue resources. Current technologies used for day-to-day emergency response information gathering from the public, such as 9-1-1 calls and social media, are often disrupted by the disaster?s impact, which may persist for days after an event. One of the key factors enabling a coordinated emergency response and community resilience to disaster is rapid communication from community members such as residents, businesses, schools and hospitals to public safety services about community conditions, such as the location of trapped people, collapsed buildings, fires and hazardous materials accidents, highway damage, and traffic congestion. Robust and resilient communication systems incorporating and enhancing existing technologies are the solution. The City of San Jose has recognized the likelihood of post-disaster information deficits which can be resolved through increased connectivity of diverse community elements to public safety communications. Recognizing the presence of privately-owned Smart phones throughout the community, the City is seeking an information gathering and dissemination solution that would enable Smart phone users to maintain communication with public safety services even in disaster conditions. San Jose State University, partnered with the San Jose Office of Emergency Services (OES), proposes to develop a novel method for maintaining connectivity for residents to public safety services. The proposed connectivity and networking technologies will keep citizens connected to vital services and information, and allow them to provide disaster assessment information to public safety agencies. This project will also create a cloud dashboard for emergency responders, and create a comprehensive view of community conditions which leads to an effective emergency response. The prototype system will enable the city's public safety agencies to prioritize emergency response demands and respond quickly, and minimize the catastrophic impact on the City of San Jose and its community and economy. The prevalence of disruptive events across the United States makes the development of a resilient communication solution imperative. The available collaboration with the City of San Jose provides a real-world partner and testbed for new technology applications with nation-wide application potential. As climates change, storms become stronger, sea levels rise, the electricity grid ages and social disruptions increase, time is of the essence for creating a resilient and accessible solution to reliable communication connectivity. This Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will solve the key challenges that must be tackled to achieve this timeliness and provide strategies and system solutions to spur emergency awareness, management, and preparedness. Finally, all code and data in this project will be released openly, supporting future research, development, and training.First responders to disasters need a complete picture of the community's status in order to accurately assess the condition of the inhabitants and organize available resources to save lives, protect the environment and prevent further damage in the community. In normal circumstances public safety services rely on 9-1-1 calls and social media to gather information from residents about community conditions. However, under disaster conditions, these normal communication methods will be interrupted, including landline and cell phones, internet connectivity and power. In these circumstances, novel systems must be available to substitute for the lost connectivity, to allow residents to connect to the public safety answering point, and to allow the Emergency Operations Center to collect and aggregate critical information across sectors to ensure that lifesaving operations are conducted expeditiously. The solution to managing risks to disaster-prone communities includes integrating existing technologies, applications, data and e-services in sustainable networks that will support emergency communications even in catastrophic events. This research proposes to develop a community infrastructure for interoperable emergency connectivity that can operate in austere conditions, provide its own power, and create linkages throughout the community and across jurisdictional boundaries. This project will deploy the edge devices in local communities with multi-modal communication modules as well as an external long range radio. The proposed resilient and participatory networking framework on top of the remote edge devices will enable collaborative communication as well as participatory sensing. To solve current deficiencies in the ability of allowing city emergency responders to control and automate the remote edge devices, this project extends existing cloud orchestration frameworks to edge devices that are agnostic to the network media. For this demonstration project, the central cloud deployed in the City of San Jose?s Emergency Operations Center will control the remote edge devices, and be responsible for resilient quality testing, automatic validation, disaster assessment, resource allocation, and the automation of remote edge devices.