Investigating the Suitability of Delay Tolerant Networks for Broadcasting Tsunami Warnings in Palu, Indonesia

TL;DR

This study evaluates the use of Delay Tolerant Networks for tsunami warning dissemination in Palu, Indonesia, finding current protocols inadequate for urgent post-earthquake alerts but potentially useful for pre-earthquake scenarios.

Contribution

It assesses the effectiveness of DTN routing protocols in tsunami warning systems through simulation, highlighting their limitations and potential applications.

Findings

Epidemic and Spray and Wait protocols are unsuitable for urgent post-earthquake warnings.

Protocols may be promising for earthquake scenarios preceding tsunamis.

Traditional communication methods are compromised after earthquakes, motivating alternative approaches.

Abstract

On the 28th of September, 2018, a tsunami hit the city of Palu in Indonesia, killing 4,340 people. The earthquake preceding the tsunami crippled communication lines and may have rendered the transmission of tsunami warning messages using traditional end-to-end approaches impossible. This paper proposes an alternative approach using Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) for tsunami warning message routing given their resilience to disruptions and sparse connections. Both Epidemic and Spray and Wait routing protocols were simulated in a pseudo-realistic environment to evaluate their effectiveness for transmitting tsunami warning messages in Palu. Results indicated that these protocols are not suitable for the tight time constraints of post-earthquake tsunami warnings with the currently available technology. However, they may have promising applications for the earthquakes that precede tsunamis.