Geo-Based Content Sharing for Disaster Relief Applications

Floating Content (FC) is an infrastructure-less communication paradigm based on opportunistic replication of a piece of content in a geographically constrained location and for a limited amount of time. The fact that it does not rely on any infrastructure makes it appealing for all those settings where infrastructure is not available or malfunctioning. In this paper we analyze its feasibility in the aftermath of a disaster, as a communication service in support of applications for rescue coordination and situational awareness. We analyze the possible scenarios of disaster, with a special focus on the local context (Iceland in our case), and on a subset of disasters which are of economic and social interests. We characterize the available communication network, its structure, and we individuate some criticalities which could play a key role in case of disaster. Specifically, we consider two services, related to two disaster scenarios. A first one is a form of situation awareness, without the support of fixed communication infrastructure. A second service is a form of infrastructure-less social driving application. The exchange of information between vehicles in the vicinity of a region interested by a disaster, enabled by such app, could help mitigate the impact of disasters and hazardous conditions on vehicle traffic. For both services, we describe a possible implementation using Floating Content. Finally, for these scenarios, we identify some research issues which stand in the way of a realistic, practical implementation based on FC.