On the impact of physical-cyber world interactions during unexpected events

Physical world events have a strong and direct impact on the communication activity seen in the cyber world. In this paper, we present three physical world events where we conducted passive network traffic measurements to study the interaction between physical and cyber worlds. We consider the following types of events: an active shooter drill, a science festival scenario, and an emergency response drill involving a simulated dirty bomb attack. The network behavior during these events is contrasted with the regular network behavior. In some events, we observed substantial drop in network traffic whereas in some others, we noticed high traffic surge. Therefore, the deviation observed in the cyber world activity may be exploited to automate the detection of physical world events. The drills also involved setting up of wireless mesh network infrastructure to assist first responders in their rescue operations and provide Internet connectivity to attendees of science festival. Our passive network measurements provided valuable insights which would help us in configuring wireless mesh network testbeds more efficiently and thereby providing efficient coordination of the response activity and saving human lives and properties.