Improved GPS-free Ad-hoc Network Positioning for Urban Disaster Response

Wireless Ad-hoc networks have exposed their strength of self-organizing, self-healing suitable for communications in disaster cases where the infrastructure devices might be damaged. Knowing the physical location of people or important objects is very important in supporting people from self-protection, searching and rescuing. This paper introduces an Improved GPS-free Ad-hoc Network Positioning Algorithm Based on Self-Organizing Maps to support the response in urban disasters. The method is free from GPS and is less expensive and suitable for indoor environments. The simulation results show the improvement of the proposed algorithm. In addition, it is also noted that by attaching small wireless intelligent sensors running the algorithm on cultural heritage objects, we can monitor their physical location as well as the environment information such as temperature and humidity, protect them from any harm to the object like thieves and find them in early stages of disasters.