On disaster information gathering in a complex shanty town terrain

Abstract

Information gathering during a disaster management has a crucial role in designing the disaster response mechanism. Several factors such as geography, infrastructure, and population influence the information gathering process. The task is particularly complex when disasters strike a shanty town. A shanty town terrain is characterized by its high population density, considerable level of under-development, and poor infrastructure. Mobile Data Collection agents (MDCs) can be assigned with the task of data collection in the aftermath of a disaster. In this paper, we study the difficulty of data gathering process using two movement models, Path Type Based Movement and Path Memory Based Movement in combination with data hand-off strategies No Hand-off, Superior-Only Hand-off and Superior-Peer Hand-off. We use the metrics such as percentage data collected, percentage way coverage, and the number of inter-MDC meetings for analyzing the performance of MDCs in the data gathering process. The low values of data collected and way coverage show the difficulty in obtaining disaster-data from a complex shanty town terrain.