In Japan, where earthquakes occur frequently, it is important to deploy technologies that enable rapid relief efforts for victims in the event of a large-scale disaster. In addition, it is also important to establish a means of information and communication in disasters, as telecommunication infrastructure is expected to be inoperable due to damage or power outages during disasters.
It is also expected to utilize autonomously moving devices such as mobile terminals and drones to deliver content and rescue victims during disasters.
Therefore, we are working on research to support evacuation activities of disaster victims and to secure means of information and communication during disasters, focusing on the following themes.
Techniques Sharing Information at Disasters Using DTN
When a disaster strikes, information on evacuation centers and evacuation routes is essential for victims to evacuate safely and quickly. Although the collection of route breakdowns is necessary to propose appropriate evacuation routes, the communication infrastructure will be unusable in the event of a large-scale disaster.
To solve this problem, it is effective to collect information on route failures between mobile terminals owned by evacuees using a Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) without using communication infrastructure and propose evacuation routes using this information.
To this end, we are working on a research project to determine the accessibility of faulty points on the evacuation route for each evacuee attribute, and to seek and present evacuation routes for each evacuee attribute.
Rescue Techniques at Disasters Using Drone
During disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons, it is difficult to use mobile devices due to expected damage to communication infrastructure and power outages. Therefore, it is expected that drones, which can fly autonomously and transport supplies, will be used to search and rescue victims. However, in order to effectively use a limited number of drones to quickly find victims and carry out rescue activities, it is important to select and set appropriate travel routes for the drones.
To this end, our laboratory is working on technology to optimally design drone travel routes to minimize the time required to rescue victims.
Content Availability in Information-Centric Networking
When a disaster such as an earthquake strikes, a portion of the network is rendered unusable. However, in the Information-Centric Networking (ICN), copies of content is cached at routers, so even if the reachability of the original content is lost, the reachability of the content may still be maintained by accessing to any copy of content.
To this end, we are researching techniques to maintain high delivery quality by appropriately determining the location of the original copy (mirror) of the content and the cache location of the copy. We are also working on mathematical modeling of the impact of network topology and routing on the availability of content.
In addition, to address the problem of loss of reachability of content whose originals exist within the failure zone in the event of a disaster, we are working on restoring content availability by promoting copies that exist in caches to the originals.