SOSCast: Location Estimation of Immobilized Persons through SOS Message Propagation

This paper proposes the design of SOS Cast, an application that will assist the search for immobilized persons in a disaster area. When a catastrophic disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami occurs, people may be injured and trapped in damaged buildings and debris. Note that a prompt rescue operation during the first 72 hours is critical in saving many lives. However, it is difficult for immobilized persons to ask for help because conventional communication services such as cellular phone networks are quite likely to be severely damaged. In a particular affected area, the SOS Cast propagates SOS messages from immobilized persons through a direct communication between smart phones. By collecting these SOS messages, rescuers can estimate the locations of the immobilized persons and view it on their smart phones. We have shown in our preliminary experiment within a residential area that SOS Cast is capable of estimating the location of an immobilized person based on the collected SOS messages.