Post-disaster Navigation and Allied Services over Opportunistic Networks

This book provides the details of developing a digital pedestrian map construction system over the intermittently connected mobile network. Over the past couple of decades, countries across the world, both developing and developed, have witnessed a significant number of disasters. Thus, it has become mandatory for each of the disaster-prone countries to equip themselves with appropriate measures to cope with the challenges of providing post-disaster services. Some of the serious challenges are incapacitated communication infrastructure, unstable power supply and inaccessible road networks. Out of these challenges, the destruction of road networks, especially in developing countries, acts as a major hindrance to effective disaster management. To be more specific, the success of a disaster response operation generally depends on the speed of evacuation and transportation of adequate amount of relief materials at the right time to the disaster-affected areas. Hence, map-based navigation support is a primary requirement for post-disaster relief operations. This book also provides the solution of the two other important post-disaster management services such as situational awareness and resource allocation. Both of these services are invariably dependent on the existence of navigation support. Finally, in order to offer such services, the other challenge is to address the problem of incapacitated communication infrastructure. This book also deals with such challenges in post-disaster scenarios and develops automated post-disaster management services.

Suman Bhattacharjee is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Information Technology, Dr. B. C. Roy Engineering College, Durgapur, India. He has received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. Prior to that, he has received M.Tech. and B.Tech. degrees from West Bengal University of Technology. Suman has around 10 years of experience in academia, research and software industry. He has got 11 publications till date in international journals and conference proceedings in the area of wireless ad hoc networks and peer-to-peer networks. His current research interest includes opportunistic networks, device-to-device communication and complex networks analysis. He is a professional member of ACM.

Siuli Roy is Professor and Head of the Department of Information Technology, Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science Engineering and MCA both from Jadavpur University. She has around 25 years of experience in academic research, software development and business in organizations of international repute including Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, Japan. Roy has profound research experience with more than 40 research publications in international journals and conference proceedings in the area of wireless networking and pervasive computing. She co-authored two books, namely "Enhancing Performance of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks with Smart antennas", with CRC Press (2005), and "Reliable Post Disaster Services over Smartphone based DTN", with Springer Nature (2019). Roy handled five Govt. funded R&D projects as Principal Investigator/ Co-PI/Technology Partner. Her current interest focuses on empowering the rural artisan community of India with an ICT-enabled capability framework.

Sipra Das Bit is Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India. She also served as Visiting Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Technology, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, in 2017. A recipient of the Career Award for Young Teachers from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), she has more than 30 years of teaching and research experience. Professor Das Bit has published many research papers in reputed journals and refereed international conference proceedings. She also has three books to her credit. Her current research interests include Internet of things, wireless sensor network, delay-tolerant network, mobile computing and network security. She is a senior member of IEEE.