Delay-Tolerant Networking for Tsunami Evacuation on the Small Island of Hachijojima: A Study of Epidemic and Prophet Routing

TL;DR

This study evaluates epidemic and prophet routing schemes in delay-tolerant networks formed by mobile devices for tsunami evacuation on Hachijojima, aiming to improve communication when traditional infrastructure fails during disasters.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of two DTN routing schemes specifically tailored for tsunami evacuation scenarios on a small island.

Findings

Epidemic routing shows higher message delivery rates.

Prophet routing offers lower latency under certain conditions.

Both schemes demonstrate potential for emergency communication in infrastructure-less environments.

Abstract

Tsunami disasters pose a serious and recurring threat to coastal and island communities. When a large earthquake occurs, people are forced to make evacuation decisions under extreme time pressure, often at the same time as the communication infrastructure is damaged or completely lost. In such circumstances, the familiar channels for sharing information - cellular networks, the internet, and even landlines - can no longer be relied upon. What typically remains are the mobile devices that evacuees carry with them. These devices can form Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), in which messages are forwarded opportunistically whenever people come into contact. To explore this, we evaluate multi-criteria performance characteristics of two DTN routing schemes in a pre-tsunami evacuation scenario for the island of Hachijojima, Japan use case.