Using SOS message propagation to estimate the location of immobilized persons

Abstract

This demonstration presents SOSCast, an application that will assist the search for immobilized persons in a disaster area. When a catastrophic disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami occurs, people may be immobilized because of an injury or become trapped in buildings and debris. However, in such a situation, since conventional communication services are likely to be severely damaged, it would be difficult for immobilized persons to ask for rescue using their mobile phones. As a solution, we present SOSCast, which propagates SOS messages through direct communication between smartphones most especially inside the disaster area. By collecting these SOS messages, rescuers can estimate the locations of people who need help using the application. In this demonstration, we will show our prototype implementation of the SOSCast for SOS message processing and its map function to estimate the location of immobilized persons.