Developing a Message Broadcasting System for Natural Disasters

Authors : Veysel Harun Şahin, Ismail Öztel

Pages : 13-21

Doi:10.29137/umagd.664730

View : 28 | Download : 8

Publication Date : 2021-01-18

Article Type : Research

Abstract :Natural disasters may cause fatal results on earth and often, it concludes with death and great destruction. One of the ways to cope with these effects is effective and continuous communication when the communication infrastructure destroyed with disasters. In this study, a message broadcasting system is proposed to enable the relief organizations to broadcast messages to the people in a disaster area even the communication infrastructures collapsed. The system uses smartphones for communication because of its widespread usage in the community. It consists of two mobile applications: master node and neighbor node. The master node is used to broadcast messages to disaster sufferers in the disaster area by relief organizations. The neighbor node receives the broadcasted message and also broadcasts the received message to other neighbor nodes. In the system, the communication between the smartphones were achieved by using Google Nearby Connections API. This API allows Android operating system smartphones to broadcast/discover each other and exchange messages regardless of network connectivity with the help of Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi. In the context of this study, the proposed system was successfully developed and tested in different scenarios by using smartphones.
Keywords : Disaster, Emergency Communication, Mobile Application, Wireless Communication, Google Nearby Connections API