Information Infrastructure for Rescue Systems

In a disaster situation, it is important to quickly collect global information on the disaster area and victims buried in the debris awaiting rescue. In the DDT project (Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban Areas, III-4 Development of Advanced Robots and Information Systems for Disaster Response), research and development activities on rescue infrastructure for global information collection have been carried out. In infrastructure-related activities carried out by the mission unit, ubiquitous handy terminal devices and technology for forming adhoc wireless communication networks were developed. In addition, technology was developed to integrate the information collected, including communication protocol design, on a GIS system. In this paper, the current R&D activities of the mission unit with regard to infrastructure in the DDT project are overviewed, and some technologies developed thus far are introduced.