Emergency situations supported by Context-Aware and application streaming technologies

Abstract: The concept of Emergency Telecommunications (EMTEL) addresses a broad spectrum of aspects related to the provisioning of telecommunications services in emergency situations; these can range from an individual in a state of personal emergency (with need to make an emergency call due to sudden illness, traffic accident, outbreak of fire at home) to a very broad perspective of serious disruptions (earthquakes, floods, terrorist attacks, etc.). The concept also covers the telecommunications needs of public safety resources, like: police, firefighters, ambulances and other medical services. Such services usually rely on dedicated networks and equipments, often different for different services. Leveraging on pervasive mobile technologies and context-aware systems it is possible to realize such critical services on large public telecommunications networks. We designed and implemented PICO (control platforms and delivery of services in converged networks), an innovative Context-Aware solution for service delivery and management of emergency situations. The Context-Aware platform for fixed-mobile convergence is based on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) platform and application streaming on Android OS. Thanks to the PICO platform we were able to implement customized context-aware emergency services with demanding performance requirements on top of a public IMS infrastructure. The PICO platform enables the integration of context-aware emergency services but some works are needed for minimizing energy consumption