Hybrid communication architecture for emergency response — An implementation in firefighter´s use case

Emergency response is a critical mission. In an emergency situation, coordination and information dissemination are two of the most important tasks. The rise of the smart mobile devices leads to the tendency to use these devices to facilitate the aforementioned tasks. Despite of that, communication based on mobile devices in an emergency situation is not always straight forward since parts of the networks might not be available at the same time. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to keep the information synchronized across multiple stakeholders. In this work, we design and implement a hybrid communication system to support the relief work of the responders, in particular, coordination and information synchronization among the stakeholders through the usage of mobile devices. Our focus lies on the relief works carried out by the firefighters. Our designed system is evaluated regarding its performance and its usability through a field test to show its applicability in practice.