Communications in Emergency and Crisis Situations

In emergency and crisis situations (ECS) like earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, it is very important that communication facilities are operative to provide services both to rescue teams and civilians. In ECS it is very common that communication premises are often unable to provide services, either due to physical damages or traffic overload. In such a case there is the need for rapid reestablishment of communication services. In this paper the communication services that can be exploited for ECS mitigation are discussed. The usage scenarios of such services are studied. Following that and looking from a network perspective view an ECS communication network architecture is presented. This architecture aims to provide seamless interoperability of varies communication technologies often present in ECS