An Infrastructure-Less Emergency Communication System: A Blockchain-Based Framework

In the aftermath of a disaster, natural or man-made, successful emergency management operations vitally depend on reliable communication infrastructures. However, large-scale extreme events may dismantle telecommunication infrastructures and impair rescue operations. The current state of practice to maintain communication when infrastructures are not operable mostly focuses on using temporary infrastructures including mobile telecom towers. However, these centralized solutions heavily depend on equipment that may not be readily available. To address this issue, this paper aims to create theoretical foundations for, and empirically examine the performance of, a novel decentralized and infrastructure-less communication system that uses an ad hoc mobile network, distributed ledger and Blockchain technology, and an all-to-all broadcasting routing algorithm. When the proposed communication system is used, mobile devices in the affected area connect with each other through device-to-device Wi-Fi Direct, create a temporary mobile ad hoc network, and share spatial information through the stepwise routing algorithm and distributed ledgers. At the end of this process, each device in the network will have spatial information of all available devices in the area. Therefore, when first responders arrive in the affected area, they can locate all devices and have access to all collected information immediately through a direct connection to only one device in the area. The outcomes of this study will fundamentally transform the emergency communication solutions and can significantly shorten the duration of rescue operations by helping first responders locate citizens in the affected area faster and more efficiently.