Real-Time Disaster Evacuation Guidance Using Opportunistic Communications

When a major disaster occurs, it is highly possible that mobile communications won´t work at all in disaster areas. Although some disaster tolerant applications are available in mobile phones, disaster evacuation guidance still has a problem in gathering and utilizing real-time information regarding the disaster areas under a situation where there is no mobile communication services. Especially, the information, such as positions of impassable roads by building collapse and dangerous areas by fire, is important to realize smooth guidance. To overcome this problem, we propose a real-time disaster evacuation guidance in which evacuees gather the information by themselves and share using opportunistic communications between their mobile phones. Our guidance enables the evacuees to know where the impassable roads and dangerous areas exist beforehand, which can contributes to considerable reduction of evacuation time. We conduct a performance evaluation of the evacuation time by simulating this scenario on some road map graphs. As a result, we find that the more extensive damage a disaster area has, the more prompt evacuation can be achieved with the aid of the opportunistic communications.