Active Disaster Response System for a Smart Building

Abstract

Disaster warning and surveillance systems have been widely applied to help the public be aware of an emergency. However, existing warning systems are unable to cooperate with household appliances or embedded controllers; that is, they cannot provide enough time for preparedness and evacuation, especially for disasters like earthquakes. In addition, the existing warning and surveillance systems are not responsible for collecting sufficient information inside a building for relief workers to conduct a proper rescue action after a disaster happens. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a proof of concept prototype, named the active disaster response system (ADRS), which automatically performs emergency tasks when an earthquake happens. ADRS can interpret Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messages, published by an official agency, and actuate embedded controllers to perform emergency tasks to respond to the alerts. Examples of emergency tasks include opening doors and windows and cutting off power lines and gas valves. In addition, ADRS can maintain a temporary network by utilizing the embedded controllers; hence, victims trapped inside a building are still able to post emergency messages if the original network is disconnected. We conducted a field trial to evaluate the effectiveness of ADRS after an earthquake happened. Our results show that compared to manually operating emergency tasks, ADRS can reduce the operation time by up to 15 s, which is long enough for people to get under sturdy furniture, or to evacuate from the third floor to the first floor, or to run more than 100 m.

Visual Sensing for Urban Flood Monitoring

“…In a modernized smart city, information and communication technology (ICT) has been widely applied in areas such as transportation management, communication, resource management, and instrument information. Technologies such as cyber-surveillance and sensor networks are also commonly employed in a variety of intelligent applications [ 9 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. In addition to long-term water management, the hydrological management of a smart city includes key components, such as short-term emergency flood alarm and disaster reduction activities, which are decided by the departments of disaster prevention and hydrological management.…”

Energy-Efficient Transmissions for Remote Wireless Sensor Networks: An Integrated HAP/Satellite Architecture for Emergency Scenarios

“…A radio resource management (RRM) technique was proposed for implementation in a multi-hop scenario where mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) cooperated with an HAP system towards a common goal of enhancing the access to MBMS services. Lin et al [ 16 ] described the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype, named the active disaster response system (ADRS), which automatically performs emergency tasks when an earthquake happens. In [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], the authors provide a number of different architectures for emergency networks.…”

“…Lin et al [ 16 ] described the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype, named the active disaster response system (ADRS), which automatically performs emergency tasks when an earthquake happens. In [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], the authors provide a number of different architectures for emergency networks. However, there are quite a few works in the literature that emphasize the IHS architecture’s suitability for emergency communications.…”

Environmental Hazards: A Coverage Response Approach

“…Together the increased burden of hazards and efficacy of Smart Systems raise the question that if interest exists in evolving more innovative business models [20], then why not with emergency response models linking interactive human responses with environmental hazards? What Smart Systems architectures [21] and applications [22], or components of the same, are missing? How are the uses, interpretations, and interactive responses of individuals [23], groups or crowds [24], and government agencies [25] being incorporated with such systems?…”