An Autonomous, Scalable and Low-Cost IoT Based Framework for Disaster Management System

Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a crucial role in Disaster Management. The amount of research produced, and the available commercial solutions are an indication of this fact. These solutions come in various forms and shapes in terms of complexity, features, and functionality. For a Disaster Management System, visibility and rapid-dynamic response are the keystones. Several proposals attempted to address this requirement with dashboards, node clusters, technology convergence, and event localization. These models employ various tools and platforms for data collection, visualization, analysis, alert management, and integration. However, they fall short of making the system simple and autonomous. This paper proposes a framework to bridge this gap by using low-cost off-the-shelf modules, an Observer node, hybrid connectivity and a message forwarding mechanism between the nodes. Despite being simple at its core, the framework is modular and hence can be extended to support a Disaster Management System of any size. Being open-ended leaves a lot of scope for future integration and scale-out.