Expediting Assessment of Damaged Buildings during Disaster Response Using Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The complexity of planning after a catastrophic incident is significantly influenced by disruption of critical infrastructure like transportation and telecommunication systems, making it very difficult to achieve a credible common operating picture to respond to the disaster. To increase situational awareness, it is important for first responders to acquire and share building information like structural damage and probability of further collapse of buildings at the disaster site. Current paper-based communications take 24 to 48 hours (or longer) to reach command centers causing response activities to begin without an assessment of critical needs. This paper proposes a framework that allows structural engineers to seamlessly exchange critical information about affected buildings with first responders based on establishment of Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET). In a mobile wireless ad hoc network, computers (nodes) in the network cooperate to forward packets for each other, due to the limited wireless transmission range of each individual node. Since MANET do not require any communication infrastructure, they are ideal for communicating during disasters. Adopting such a framework will help planners prioritize search and rescue operations more effectively.