First Responder Communication in Urban Environments

Communication is crucial for first responders. Crisis management is nearly impossible without good means of communication. Unfortunately the communication technology used by first responders today does not scale well. Also most of the given infrastructure, such as cell towers, might be destroyed. In recent research ad-hoc and peer-to-peer based communication has been proposed to solve the problem of resilient communication. Most mobile devices are equipped with wireless transceivers that make them suitable to participate in ad-hoc networks. But node density might be too small for a connected topology. In this paper we, therefore, discuss the implications of an emergency switch for privately owned wireless routers. Wireless routers can transition to an emergency mode to create a supportive wireless mesh network. To analyze if such a network would be beneficial and give a resilient topology real data from wireless routers in a city is gathered. We calculate the locations of these routers from GPS traces and the resulting topologies are analyzed investigating suitability and resiliency issues