Paper Info
Title
Help beacons: design and evaluation of an ad-hoc lightweight s.o.s. system for smartphones
Abstract
We present the design and evaluation of a lightweight mobile S.O.S. system that facilitates ad-hoc communication between first responders and victims in emergency situations. Our approach leverages established protocols and standards in unforeseen ways to provide a platform supporting the creation of short-lived communication links. The system comprises two mobile applications: one victim application that allows the broadcasting of distress signals by a novel use of Wi-Fi SSIDs; and a responder application that allows first responders to discover and trace the people broadcasting the signals. The main difference of our system with other platforms enabling communication in crisis situations is that our system is independent from existing network infrastructure and runs on off-the-shelf, commercially available smartphones. We describe the results of our evaluation process in the context of both a design evaluation during a real-world emergency response exercise and of two user workshops in preparation for an upcoming large-scale exercise.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2556288.2557002
CHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
s. system,mobile application,emergency situation,responder application,ad-hoc communication,evaluation process,design evaluation,lightweight mobile s.o,short-lived communication link,real-world emergency response exercise,mobile computing
Beacon,Mobile computing,Broadcasting,Ad hoc communication,Computer science,Distress signal,Multimedia
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
14
0.79
16
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Amro Al-Akkad1515.79
Leonardo Ramirez218212.68
Alexander Boden322220.00
Dave Randall4709104.32
Andreas Zimmermann5271.85