Leveraging Crowdsourcing and Crowdsensing Data for HADR Operations in a Smart City Environment

Abstract

The future of the world's population concentration lies in the bounds of the urban cities. Citizens or humans are the most important tangible resources in a Smart City environment who need to be served as well as protected. The concept of Smart Cities is trying to accomplish the idea of serving the citizens by leveraging the potential of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) assets. The citizens have access to Smart technologies and applications, and thus they form an indispensable component to complement and supplement a Smart City's operation. Especially in a Human Assistance and Disaster Recovery (HADR) operation where a Smart City's core infrastructure might get compromised, the assets of citizens can be put to use. This paper aims to describe the current state of affairs for safety in cities and humanitarian assistance in emergency situations, which require leveraging Situational Awareness (SA) data. We discuss and propose mechanisms for connecting to and utilizing Crowdsourcing and Crowdsensing data in a Smart City environment which can assist in efficient HADR operations.

A LoRa Mesh Network Asset Tracking Prototype

“…Following that group's conclusion in 2019, this work now continues in NATO RTG IST-176 titled "Federated Interoperability of Military C2 and IoT Systems". That group continues work on Smart Cities, but also broadens the scope to include such use cases as our recent work on crowdsourcing and crowdsensing [22].…”

Ridesharing and Crowdsourcing for Smart Cities: Technologies, Paradigms and Use Cases

“…Pradhan et al [141] examined and suggested a technique for connecting to and exploiting crowdsourcing and crowd sensing data in a smart city context to aid in effective humanitarian assistance and disaster recovery (HADR) operations. Their method considered how to utilize the ICT assets of citizens and responder agents to contribute situational awareness (SA) data for HADR operations in a disaster situation where the essential infrastructure of a smart city may be jeopardized.…”

“…• The development of mobile connected technology and public interest in affordable and environment-friendly services are driving the adoption of sharing economic and collaborative systems in many application areas. The work of Pradhan et al [141] shows that in the transportation sector, sharing economic and collaborative systems have gained attraction with ridesharing and crowdsourcing services implemented for several applications.…”

Towards Collaborative Mobile Crowdsourcing

“…This emerging model has become a ubiquitous mean for individuals and organizations to use open-call format to attract and recruit many mobile users to complete specific tasks that require the use of the device's capabilities (e.g., builtin sensors such as GPS, accelerometer, and cameras as well as computational resources) along with the device holder's skills set (e.g., communication, judgment, expertise) [1]. By combining and leveraging the abilities of humans and the capabilities of machines, MC can accomplish tasks that are hardly handled by standalone IoT devices for a wide range of applications including weather reporting, health monitoring, traffic control, crowd and disaster management [2], [3].…”