Communications of the ACM
People in Disaster Areas Are Not Helpless Victims, but Useful Informants
A researcher at the Delft University of Technology has proposed a decentralised system in which people in a disaster area share information guide each other to safety, while serving as field sensors for sharing information about the disaster.
Credit: Delft University of Technology
A decentralized disaster management system would enable people to guide themselves to safety and act as field sensors for sharing information about changing conditions, says the Delft University of Technology's Lucy Gunawan. Her research shows that such a solution would need a good navigation system, and information provided to people must be clustered in a reliable way in a collective map.
Gunawan simulated a catastrophe in Delft, and the results showed that her proposed system would be superior to a traditional centralized system in guiding people to safety and providing operators with information on conditions in the disaster area.
"These people, who are eyewitnesses and spread throughout the disaster area, form the largest group in the disaster area," she notes. "This means that these people form a great potential resource for collecting first-hand information about the catastrophic event."
Gunawan believes her research could provide the foundation for next-generation disaster-management systems.
From Delft University of Technology
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