The main objectives in this workshop are to address novel research results in the areas of secure and reliable multimedia communications for emergency services in heterogeneous wireless networks, and emergency risk management and coordination systems thus enabling the delivery of emergency services…
The main objectives in this workshop are to address novel research results in the areas of secure and reliable multimedia communications for emergency services in heterogeneous wireless networks, and emergency risk management and coordination systems thus enabling the delivery of emergency services to the ‘end-user’ in a coordinated and optimized way.
The transition to next generation networks is often coupled with the vision of innovative services providing personalized and customizable services over an all-IP infrastructure. To enable a smooth transition, next generation all-IP networks need not only support more services but also support current vital services, namely emergency services. These include communications solutions to address emergency situations such as terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes, as well as day-to-day emergency cases based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).
To achieve these goals two major technological challenges need to be tackled: First, a general solution for secure multimedia communication in extreme emergency situations. Such emergency services in cases of natural disasters or catastrophes will often involve the establishment of an ad-hoc networking environment. In this context, there is a need for mechanisms for fast and lightweight establishment of trust relations between ad-hoc members of an emergency team and ensuring the security of their communication. Furthermore, to enable multimedia communication in such environments, an architecture is required for supporting the distribution of currently centralized services such as VoIP and name translation and supporting those services in a reliable manner withstanding any failures and changes of the network. Secondly, there is a need for the provisioning of day-to-day emergency communication in next generation All-IP networks. Due to the different structure of IP and PSTN networks it is not possible to simply reuse current standards and solutions for realizing such communication in IP networks. This involves location management and identification solutions as well as providing a reliable VoIP service infrastructure. To be able to support emergency services over an all-IP infrastructure further work is required in the area of highly reliable IP.
Moreover, the delivery of Emergency Services require a general emergency risk management and coordination system to set the activities to be carried out during the entire disaster event lifecycle, from the emergency planning up to the dissemination of the required tasks to the appropriate entities and the coordination between those entities. This will provide a complete picture on: “How to face any emergency event” to identify the required emergency handling tasks and coordinate the actions of all involved emergency workers.
