E-HAMC: Leveraging Fog computing for emergency alert service

Abstract

Timeliness is one the most important factors in emergency management. Emergency notification mechanism has to be hassle free and quick, in order to have efficient response for any disaster, health-fix, act of terrorism, etc. In this paper, we present service architecture for emergency alert, using Fog computing. Fog computing brings cloud resources close to the underlying devices and IoTs, which makes it ideal for latency sensitive services. Furthermore, Fog is used for offloading resource constrained devices. Our smart phone based service, known as Emergency Help Alert Mobile Cloud (E-HAMC) provides a quick way of notifying the relevant emergency dealing department, utilizing the services of Fog for offloading as well as pre-processing purposes. The service sends the location of incident and contacts the appropriate emergency dealing department automatically through already stored contact numbers. The emergency related information is then synchronized automatically from Fog to the Cloud, allowing further analysis and improvement in safety of the people and creates extended portfolio of services for the concerned authorities as well as the users. Performance in most certain scenarios is also evaluated and presented in this study, which shows the applicability of our system and its future prospects.