A Survey on the Role of Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT in Disaster Management
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paper_title: Natural Disaster Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks: A Case Study of Data-intensive Applications upon Low-Cost Scalable Systems

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The wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has applied in monitoring natural disasters for more than one decade. Disasters can be closely monitored by augmenting a variety of sensors, and WSN has merits in (1) low cost, (2) quick response, and (3) salability and flexibility. Natural disaster monitoring with WSN is a well-known data intensive application for the high bandwidth requirements and stringent delay constraints. It manifests a typical paradigm of data-intensive application upon low-cost scalable system. In this study, we first assessed representative works in this area by classifying those in the domains of application of WSNs for disasters and optimization technologies significantly distinguishing these from general-purpose WSNs. We then described the design of an early warning system for geohazards in reservoir region, which relies on the WSN technology inspired by the existing work with focuses on issues of (1) supporting reliable data transmission, (2) handling huge data of heterogeneous sources and types, and (3) minimizing energy consumption. This study proposes a dynamic routing protocol, a method for network recovery, and a method for managing mobile nodes to enable real-time and reliable data transmission. The system incorporates data fusion and reconstruction approaches to bring together all data into a single view of the geohazard under monitoring. A distributed algorithm for joint optimal control of power and rate has been developed, which can improve utility of network (> 95 %) and to minimize the energy consumption (reduction by > 20 % in comparison with LEACH). Experimental results indicate the potentials of the proposed approaches in terms of adapting to the needs of early warning on geohazards.
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paper_title: Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey

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Becoming mature enough to be used for improving the quality of life, wireless sensor network technologies are considered as one of the key research areas in computer science and healthcare application industries. The pervasive healthcare systems provide rich contextual information and alerting mechanisms against odd conditions with continuous monitoring. This minimizes the need for caregivers and helps the chronically ill and elderly to survive an independent life, besides provides quality care for the babies and little children whose both parents have to work. Although having significant benefits, the area has still major challenges which are investigated in this paper. We provide several state of the art examples together with the design considerations like unobtrusiveness, scalability, energy efficiency, security and also provide a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and challenges of these systems.
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paper_title: Buildings and Crowds: Forming Smart Cities for More Effective Disaster Management

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During the recent years, several advances about smart environments are taking place. The challenge of transforming cities to 'smart' cities aims to combine competitiveness and sustainable urban development simultaneously. This is taking place through the combination of traditional urban environment, governmental and social functions with modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) providing e-services. At the same time, next generation technologies community puts efforts on issues associated with the development of community-based services that aim to capture and assess large amounts of data in a systematic collaborative manner. Thus, the concept of crowd sourcing becomes quite popular. In this paper we focus on discussing whether crowd sourcing can be facilitated in the contexts of smart buildings and cities in order to support a more effective and efficient integrated disaster management approach. Within this context, we exemplify the approach using few model architecture diagrams.
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paper_title: Drought Forecast Model and Framework Using Wireless Sensor Networks *

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Taiwan faces a serious challenge with an increasing frequency of drought in recent years. Therefore, it is important to utilize the state-of-the-art sensing and communication technologies to monitor and forecast effectively the drought, and then notify the relevant departments for taking preventive measures against this natural disaster. This paper proposed and developed a Drought Forecast and Alert System (DFAS), which is a 4-tier system framework composed of Mobile Users (MUs), Ecology Monitoring Sensors (EMSs), Integrated Service Server (ISS), and Intelligent Drought Decision System (ID 2 S). DFAS combines the wireless sensor networks, embedded multimedia communications and neural network decision technologies to effectively achieve the forecast and alert of the drought. DFAS analyzes the drought level of the coming 7 th day via the proposed drought forecast model derived from the Back-Propagation Network algorithm. The drought inference factors are the 30-day accumulated rainfall, daily mean temperature, and the soil moisture to improve the accuracy of forecasting drought. These inference factors are detected, collected and transmitted in real-time via the Mote sensors and mobile networks. Once a region with possible drought hazard is identified, DFAS sends altering messages to users' appliances. System implementation results reveal that DFAS provide the drought specialists and users with complete environment sensing data and images. DFAS makes it possible for the relevant personnel to take preventive measures, e.g., the adjustment of agricultural water, for a reduced loss.
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paper_title: A Robust Wireless Sensor Network for Landslide Risk Analysis: System Design, Deployment, and Field Testing

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In this paper, we propose a wireless sensor network (WSN) designed for monitoring and risk management of landslides, where data collected by sensors are delivered through the network to a remote unit for online analysis and alerting. To ensure fast deployment, robustness in harsh environments, and very long lifetime, the sensor nodes and the communication protocol have been specifically conceived, so that the network is self-organizing, fault tolerant, and adaptive. The WSN has been installed on a landslide located in Torgiovannetto (Italy) for an experimental campaign of several months where performance metrics, such as radio link and path statistics as well as battery levels, have been collected. These metrics demonstrated the effectiveness of the network protocols to manage self-organization, node failures, low link quality, and unexpected battery depletion. With negligible human intervention during the pilot experiment, the WSN revealed a very high level of robustness, which makes it suitable to monitor landslides in critical scenarios.
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paper_title: Design, development, and deployment of a wireless sensor network for detection of landslides

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Wireless sensor networks are one of the most promising emerging technologies, providing the opportunity for real-time monitoring of geographical regions (remote and hostile) that are prone to disasters. With a focus on landslide detection, this work reaffirms the capability of wireless sensor networks for disaster mitigation. A complete functional system consisting of 50 geological sensors and 20 wireless sensor nodes was deployed in Idukki, a district in the southwestern region of Kerala State, India, a highly landslide prone area. The wireless sensor network system has, for the past three years, gathered vast amounts of data such as correlated sensor data values on rainfall, moisture, pore pressure and movement, along with other geological, hydrological and soil properties, helping to provide a better understanding of the landslide scenario. Using the wireless sensor networks, system was developed an innovative three level landslide warning system (Early, Intermediate and Imminent). This system has proven its validity by delivering a real warning to the local community during heavy rains in the July 2009 monsoon season. The implementation of this system uses novel data aggregation methods for power optimization in the field deployment. A report on unanticipated challenges that were faced in the field deployment of the wireless sensor networks and the novel solutions devised to overcome them are presented here.
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paper_title: Open-Source Wireless Sensor System for Long-Term Monitoring of Slope Movement

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Power consumption is one of the major issues associated with deploying a wireless sensor to monitor natural environments in the real world. It is not practical to frequently replace the battery of a sensor that is located in a remote mountainous area. While considering to save valuable energy, the sensor must be able to detect a particular event in a timely manner and report data. To satisfy these requirements, in this paper, we present a wireless sensor system, termed SMARTCONE, which is designed to monitor the slope movement and minimize the standby power consumption, while remaining active to detect events. Multiple SMARTCONEs need to synchronously change their operation modes to collect the physical parameters and transmit raw vibration data simultaneously. SMARTCONE is consuming a power of only 0.05 mA at 3.6 V in standby mode, which is significantly less than that consumed by the previous design. As far as we know, SMARTCONE is an unprecedented instrument for the monitoring of slope movement; no other instruments can achieve such a low-energy consumption while being triggered by external vibration and managed remotely. These complicated issues are considered while designing the SMARTCONE, whose performance is then evaluated. In order to prevent redundant effort and to reduce the entry-level knowledge required by the users who wish to design a system, and to promote the use of this design for monitoring natural environments, we would like to open source the design of SMARTCONE for the public. It can be modified for use in other applications to satisfy their requirements without the need to build from scratch.
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paper_title: Landslide hazard zonation: A review of principles and practice

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Of all natural hazards, slope failures are the most amenable to measures directed towards avoidance, prevention or correction. The causes inherent in the terrain are relatively well understood, hence the possibility of approaching landslide hazard mitigation from an areal zonal point of view. This publication gives the definitions and principles of landslides, and identifies causative conditions and processes (inherent or basic conditions, geology, geomorphology, hydrologic conditions and climate, vegetation, factors that change stress conditions and strength of materials). Investigation planning is described, including preliminary studies, techniques for identifying unstable and potentially unstable areas, e.g., remote sensing and ground studies, and individual factor maps. For the analysis of data, primarily cartographical methods, numerical rating of contributing factors and numerical-cartographical methods are outlined. Mention is made of some governmental and private responses to slope stability hazards. A summary of operational precepts closes the report. (TRRL)
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paper_title: On network connectivity of wireless sensor networks for sandstorm monitoring

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As serious natural disasters, sandstorms have caused massive damages to the natural environment, national economy, and human health in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Northern China. To avoid such damages, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be deployed in the regions where sandstorms generally originate so that sensor nodes can collaboratively monitor the origin and development of sandstorms. Despite the potential advantages, the deployment of WSNs in the vicinity of sandstorms faces many unique challenges, such as the temporally buried sensors and increased path loss during sandstorms. Consequently, the WSNs may experience frequent disconnections during the sandstorms. In this paper, the connectivity issue of WSNs for sandstorm monitoring is studied. First, four types of channels a sensor can utilize during sandstorms are analyzed, which include air-to-air channel, air-to-sand channel, sand-to-air channel, and sand-to-sand channel. Based on these analytical results, the percolation-based connectivity analysis is performed. It is shown that if the sensors are buried in shallow depth, allowing sensor to use multiple types of channels improves network connectivity. Accordingly, much smaller sensor density is required compared to the case, where only terrestrial air channels are used. Through this connectivity analysis, a WSN architecture can be established for efficient and effective sandstorm monitoring.
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paper_title: Landslide Monitoring with Sensor Networks : Experiences and Lessons Learnt from a Real-World Deployment

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Wireless sensor networks have the potentials to be a very useful technology for fine-grained monitoring in remote and hostile environments. This paper reports on the implementation and deployment of a system for landslide monitoring in the Northern Italy Apennines and analyses the positive results we have achieved with it. Yet, the paper also critically analyses the problems and the inherent limitations/difficulties we had to face in developing and deploying such a system, challenging many of the 'big claims' that are often heard around wireless sensor networks.
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paper_title: Aqua-Net: A flexible architectural framework for water management based on wireless sensor networks

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Traditional techniques and technologies for water management will no longer be cost effective or efficient in meeting the demands and challenges of the coming years. In this paper we describe Aqua-Net, a wireless sensor networks (WSNs)-based architectural framework for an efficient and reliable water management application. We identify areas of research that we are currently engaged in. The proposed framework is a flexible and multi-tiered hybrid network architecture that consists of a large number of autonomous single-hop “sensor communities”, a traveling backbone network, and a data depot. The key elements of the proposed architecture are reconfigurability, fault-tolerance and modularity. The architecture also addresses practical considerations in operating such monitoring networks during floods and other natural disasters.
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paper_title: Slip surface localization in wireless sensor networks for landslide prediction

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A landslide occurs when the balance between a hill's weight and the countering resistance forces is tipped in favor of gravity. While the physics governing the interplay between these competing forces is fairly well understood, prediction of landslides has been hindered thus far by the lack of field measurements over large temporal and spatial scales necessary to capture the inherent heterogeneity in a landslide. We propose a network of sensor columns deployed at hills with landslide potential with the purpose of detecting the early signals preceding a catastrophic event. Detection is performed through a three-stage algorithm: First, sensors collectively detect small movements consistent with the formation of a slip surface separating the sliding part of hill from the static one. Once the sensors agree on the presence of such a surface, they conduct a distributed voting algorithm to separate the subset of sensors that moved from the static ones. In the second phase, moved sensors self-localize through a trilateration mechanism and their displacements are calculated. Finally, the direction of the displacements as well as the locations of the moved nodes are used to estimate the position of the slip surface. This information along with collected soil measurements (e.g. soil pore pressures) are subsequently passed to a finite element model that predicts whether and when a landslide will occur. Our initial results from simulated landslides indicate that we can achieve accuracy in the order of cm in the localization as well as the slip surface estimation steps of our algorithm. This accuracy persists as the density and the size of the sensor network decreases as well as when considerable noise is present in the ranging estimates. As for our next step, we plan to evaluate the performance of our system in controlled environments under a variety of hill configurations.
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paper_title: Towards efficient disaster management: 5G and Device to Device communication

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Recent events of multiple earthquakes in Nepal and resulting loss of life and resources bring our attention to the ever growing significance of disaster management, especially in the context of large scale nature disasters such as earthquake and Tsunami. In this paper, we focus on how disaster management can benefit from recent advances in wireless communication technologies and protocols, especially mobile technologies and devices. The paper provides an overview of how the new generation of telecommunications and technologies such as 5G, Device to Device, 4G/LTE, and software defined radio can improve the potential of disaster management networks. Our survey is different from existing surveys in that we focus on recent advances and ongoing research directions in disaster management with the focus being on the use of ubiquitous mobile devices and applications.
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paper_title: Public Safety and Emergency Case Communications: Opportunities from the Aspect of Cognitive Radio

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Recent developments in wireless communications systems and the introduction of new technologies such as cognitive radios are expected to bring beneficial methodologies and solutions to the problems of public safety and emergency case communications, especially related to interoperability issues. Physical layer adaptiveness and spectrum sensing methodology of cognitive radios are commonly emphasized related to spectral efficiency and frequency domain interoperability of public safety communications. However, wide range of opportunities introduced by the awareness, learning and intelligence features of cognitive radios necessitate the reassessment of opportunities to the public safety and emergency case communications from a more complementary aspect. One aspect can be the development of applications that will lead to communicate, locate and reach victims who are stuck in disaster areas, underground (e.g. underground mine explosions) or behind obstacles. It is aimed to discuss how communication with survivors can be accomplished and how the estimation of their locations utilizing received signals can be achieved by benefiting from the advantages of cognitive radio technology. Second objective is to define the scope of the research required for adaptive and secure physical layer reconfigurability to overcome communication congestion and to satisfy the interoperability and security requirements of public safety communications systems during emergency cases and extreme situations.
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paper_title: Spectrum considerations for public safety in the United States

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Since the inception of mobile radio, public safety agencies have relied on wireless communication systems to coordinate day-to-day and emergency operations. The decentralized and autonomous nature of the various public safety agencies in the United States has led to the deployment of a variety of systems operating in a fragmented spectrum, ranging from lower VHF to upper UHF. Due to the narrowband technologies used in public safety communications systems, public safety agencies have been limited primarily to voice services and low-speed data transfer on their private networks. In contrast, the commercial cellular sector now offers a large portfolio of services that include voice, messaging, email, Web browsing, picture transfer, video streaming, and other wideband services. In this article, some of the factors driving the expansion of spectrum allocated to public safety agencies arc described.
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paper_title: A Low-Power Scheme for Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

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One of the most challenging issues in the design of system for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is to keep the energy consumption of the sensor nodes as low as possible. Many localization systems require that the nodes keep the transceiver active during a long time consuming energy. In this work we propose a scheme to reduce the energy consumption of the mobile nodes that need to know their positions. Our strategy consists of decreasing the idle listening and an optimized allocation of the localization tasks on the nodes. Thus, the nodes that are externally powered calculate the position for the resource-constrained nodes. The scheme is based on a low-power IEEE 802.15.4 nonbeacon enabled network.
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paper_title: Context aware ad hoc network for mitigation of crowd disasters

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Abstract Our research works focuses on the design and implementation of a novel ubiquitous multi context-aware mobile phone sensing network for mitigation of crowd disasters using machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. A mobile sensor network system integrated with wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) was designed for effective prediction of a stampede during crowd disasters. This proposed sensor network consists of mobile devices that are used as crowd monitoring participant nodes that employ light sensors, accelerometers, as well as audio and video sensors to collect the relevant data. Real-time crowd dynamics modeling and real-time activity modeling have been achieved by implementing the algorithms developed for Context Acquisition and multi-context fusion. Dynamic crowd monitoring was achieved by implementing the context based region identification and grouping of participants, distributed crowd behavior estimation, and stampede prediction based on distributed consensus. The implementation of the proposed architecture in Android smartphone provides light-weight, easy to deploy, context aware wireless services for effective crowd disaster mitigation and generation of an in time alert to take measures to avoid the occurrence of a stampede. The system has been tested and illustrated within a group of people for stampede prediction by using empirically collected data.
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paper_title: Relay-by-smartphone: realizing multihop device-to-device communications

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The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami drastically changed Japanese society, and the requirements for ICT was completely redefined. After the disaster, it was impossible for disaster victims to utilize their communication devices, such as cellular phones, tablet computers, or laptop computers, to notify their families and friends of their safety and confirm the safety of their loved ones since the communication infrastructures were physically damaged or lacked the energy necessary to operate. Due to this drastic event, we have come to realize the importance of device-to-device communications. With the recent increase in popularity of D2D communications, many research works are focusing their attention on a centralized network operated by network operators and neglect the importance of decentralized infrastructureless multihop communication, which is essential for disaster relief applications. In this article, we propose the concept of multihop D2D communication network systems that are applicable to many different wireless technologies, and clarify requirements along with introducing open issues in such systems. The first generation prototype of relay by smartphone can deliver messages using only users' mobile devices, allowing us to send out emergency messages from disconnected areas as well as information sharing among people gathered in evacuation centers. The success of field experiments demonstrates steady advancement toward realizing user-driven networking powered by communication devices independent of operator networks.
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paper_title: Understanding the Limits of LoRaWAN

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Low-power wide area networking technology offers long-range communication, which enables new types of services. Several solutions exist; LoRaWAN is arguably the most adopted. It promises ubiquitous connectivity in outdoor IoT applications, while keeping network structures and management simple. This technology has received a lot of attention in recent months from network operators and solution providers. However, the technology has limitations that need to be clearly understood to avoid inflated expectations and disillusionment. This article provides an impartial and fair overview of the capabilities and limitations of LoRaWAN. We discuss those in the context of use cases, and list open research and development questions.
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paper_title: An architecture and protocol for smart continuous eHealth monitoring using 5G

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Abstract Continuous monitoring of chronic patients improves their quality of life and reduces the economic costs of the sanitary system. However, in order to ensure a good monitoring, high bandwidth and low delay are needed. The 5G technology offers higher bandwidth, lower delays and packets loss than previous technologies. This paper presents an architecture for smart eHealth monitoring of chronic patients. The architecture elements include wearable devices, to collect measures from the body, and a smartphone at the patient side in order to process the data received from the wearable devices. We also need a DataBase with an intelligent system able to send an alarm when it detects that it is happening something anomalous. The intelligent system uses machine learning in BigData taken from different hospitals and the data received from the patient to diagnose and generate alarms. Experiment tests have been done to simulate the traffic from many users to the DataBase in order to evaluate the suitability of 5G in our architecture. When there are few users (less than 200 users), we do not find big differences of round trip time between 4G and 5G, but when there are more users, like 1000 users, it increases considerably reaching 4 times more in 4G The Packet Loss is almost null in 4G until 300 users, while in 5G it is possible to keep it null until 700 users. Our results point out that in order to have high number of patients continuously monitored, it is necessary to use the 5G network because it offers low delays and guarantees the availability of bandwidth for all users.
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paper_title: Empirical propagation performance evaluation of LoRa for indoor environment

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Wireless sensors are increasingly being used for smart Buildings. LoRa is a chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology. Its CSS modulation provides wide bandwidth, increased processing gain and higher receiver sensitivity. Propagation analysis of this long-range low power wireless platform is essential to make it a prevailing technology of choice for IoT. This paper empirically evaluates the indoor propagation performance of LoRa. The practical measurements were critically analyzed against four propagation models; ITU site generic, log-distance, multi-wall and 3D ray tracing. Data was collected in the Hanover building at Glasgow Caledonian University using the LoRa transceivers. The aims of this research were (1) to assess the indoor propagation performance of LoRa technology and (2) to identify the model that best describes the indoor propagation of LoRa. The study concluded that multi-wall has the best overall performance amongst the models. This research work will facilitate the link budget design, network implementation and coverage diagnosis in similar indoor scenarios.
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paper_title: Long range communications in urban and rural environments

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Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are prominent technologies in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). Due to the long range capabilities and low energy consumption, Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are the ideal technologies to send small data occasionally. With their unique characteristics, LPWANs can be used in many applications and in different environments such as urban, rural and even indoor. The work in this paper presents a study on the LPWAN LoRa technology, by testing and evaluating its range, signal quality properties and its performance in delivering data. Three distinct scenarios are proposed and tested, one rural and two urban scenarios in Portugal. The maximum communication range achieved was 5660 meters for the rural scenario and around 2000 meters for the urban ones, and we concluded that there are three essential scenario characteristics that influence the achieved results: distance, elevation difference and obstacles in the signal path.
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paper_title: LoRa Transmission Parameter Selection

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Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies such as Long Range (LoRa) are emerging that enable power efficient wireless communication over very long distances. LPWAN devices typically communicate directly to a sink node which removes the need of constructing and maintaining a complex multi-hop network. However, to ensure efficient and reliable communication LPWAN devices often provide a large number of transmission parameters. For example, a LoRa device can be configured to use different spreading factors, bandwidth settings, coding rates and transmission powers, resulting in over 6720 possible settings. It is a challenge to determine the setting that minimises transmission energy cost while meeting the required communication performance. This paper is the first to present a thorough analysis of the impact of LoRa transmission parameter selection on communication performance. We study in detail the impact of parameter settings on energy consumption and communication reliability. Using this study we develop a link probing regime which enables us to quickly determine transmission settings that satisfy performance requirements. The presented work is a first step towards an automated mechanism for LoRa transmission parameter selection that a deployed LoRa network requires, but is not yet specified within the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) framework.
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Title: A Survey on the Role of Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT in Disaster Management

Section 1: Introduction
Description 1: Introduce the topic of disaster management, the role of emerging technologies, especially WSNs and IoT, and the importance of intelligent infrastructure for enhanced disaster resilience and public safety.

Section 2: Applications of Sensor Networks in Disaster Management
Description 2: Discuss the specific applications of sensor networks in various natural disaster scenarios such as landslides, floods, wildfires, and their effectiveness in monitoring and managing these events.

Section 3: 5G and Device to Device Communication
Description 3: Explore the capabilities of upcoming 5G systems and Device-to-Device communications in improving disaster communication and the benefits they provide in disaster scenarios.

Section 4: Software Defined Radio
Description 4: Examine the role of Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology in disaster management, including its potential applications and the challenges that need to be addressed.

Section 5: Cognitive Radio (CR)
Description 5: Discuss how Cognitive Radio technology can be used to optimize resource allocation during emergency responses and improve communication efficiency in disaster conditions.

Section 6: Indoor Position Technologies
Description 6: Describe the importance of indoor positioning technologies in disaster scenarios, particularly their role in aiding rescue teams and the challenges of implementing such technologies.

Section 7: Disaster Situation Aware Protocols for Mobile Devices
Description 7: Detail the development of disaster-aware protocols for mobile devices, their operation during emergencies, and how these protocols can adapt to dynamic disaster environments.

Section 8: Mobile Phone Disaster Mode
Description 8: Highlight the potential of mobile phones in disaster scenarios, their capabilities, and the limitations that need to be addressed to improve their effectiveness during disasters.

Section 9: Existing IoT Standards and Future Research Directions
Description 9: Review existing IoT standards such as LoRa and 4G LTE, their limitations in disaster management applications, and propose future research directions to enhance these technologies.

Section 10: Conclusion
Description 10: Summarize the key findings of the survey, the role of WSN and IoT in disaster management, and emphasize future research areas to address existing limitations and enhance disaster response capabilities.