Navigation Assistance Framework for Emergencies

Emergencies occur every day at unexpected times and impact our lives in unimaginable ways. In any emergency situation, there are two type of victims: direct victims and indirect victims. Both will have their current plans disrupted in order to deal with the emergency. Federal, State, and Local governments have established a 911 system to assist direct victims. However, there is still lack of assistance provided to the indirect victims. In this paper, we propose a Navigation Assistance Framework that allows emergency organizations to provide emergency information that can assist victims navigating out of the emergency area and reaching their intended destinations in a reasonable amount of time. We develop an emergency prototype ERSimMon to simulate this capability in a small scale to show the effectiveness of the proposed solution. In addition, we develop the Emergency Response Application (ERApp) for a smart phone platform, which intercepts the enhanced Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) broadcast message, displays the user’s location with respect to the emergency location on the map and provides navigational assistance and recommend actions to help the user navigate out of ongoing emergencies.