Table Of ContentWireless Public Safety Networks 2
Series Editor
Pierre-Noël Favennec
Wireless Public
Safety Networks 2
A Systematic Approach
Edited by
Daniel Câmara
Navid Nikaein
First published 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Press Ltd and Elsevier Ltd
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ISBN 978-1-78548-052-2
Preface
Book overview
The aim of this second book of the Public Safety Networks (PSNs) series is to
provide a system level view of some fundamental problems linked to the PSNs field.
This book focuses mainly on those specific enabling technologies that can help the
most in the deployment and usage of PSNs on real world scenarios.
xiv Wireless Public Safety Networks 2
The first chapter, Internet of Things in Support of Public Safety Networks:
Opportunities and Challenges, is twofold. First, it makes a brief overview of the
requirements and application scenarios for public safety networks, then it introduces
the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Everything (IoE) paradigm and discusses
the role it may play in the PSNs field.
Chapter 2 discusses the use of social networks in emergency management and
the new possibilities social media may bring to the PSNs field. The use of social
media in emergency management is already a reality, but its impact is still modest,
compared to what it could be. Social media may permit, for instance, the full-scale
use of crowdsourcing techniques to help in emergency management. For example, in
the advent of a catastrophe, volunteers all around the world could help authorities in
the search for life indices over satellite photos, without leaving their homes.
Chapter 3, Wearable Wireless Sensor Networks (W-WSN) for Emergency
Response in Public Safety Networks, presents the new advances on W-WSN for
PSNs. Sensors attached to the clothes of rescuers could, for example, constantly
capture information, and participate in communication to help rescuers on their
tasks. These W-WSNs could be an invaluable help to the main PSNs in the sense
that they could help to extend these networks and help with data gathering and the
dissemination of such information.
Chapter 4 elaborates on the need to support mobile backhauling in moving-cell
scenarios and describes two LTE-based solutions to enable dynamic meshing among
the base stations. The first refers to a user-centric network-assisted solution, where
the user’s equipment is assigned with enhanced capabilities for associating to
multiple base stations, thus interconnecting adjacent base stations. The second
concerns a network-centric solution, where the base station stack is extended with
several terminal stacks, allowing it to discover and connect to neighboring base
stations and create a wireless mesh network.
Chapter 5 highlights the issues and limitations of the current mobility
management protocols, and presents different mobility management alternatives for
the future PSN in the context of 5G networks. This chapter also proposes a general
framework that has the capability to fulfill the public safety requirements and
dynamically adapt to different public safety situations.
Chapter 6 discusses the problem of access for Public Safety Broadband
Networks using a two-fold structure. Lightweight base stations can be used to solve
regular traffic, and more robust and faster base stations are punctually deployed to
attend the needs of disaster scenarios.
Preface xv
Chapter 7 investigates the problem of data dissemination over PSNs, making a
review of the state of the art in different information and communication
technologies. The chapter provides a critical view of different methods in the light of
the field of PSNs.
Chapter 8 talks about the multicast dissemination of warning messages to a large
population at risk. The chapter provides a clear view of the actors involved and the
architectural blocks required to implement a large-scale and consistent broadcast
warning system.
Chapter 9 investigates eMBMS (a.k.a., LTE Broadcast) which is a crucial
technology for the Group Communication and the Mission Critical Push to Talk –
two essential applications for public safety and mission critical communications
thanks to their effective way of delivering the same content to a large group of users.
Chapter 10 focuses on the best possible usage of one of the most precious
resources of any wireless network, the frequency spectrum. Frequencies are a scarce
resource and it is becoming more and more difficult to justify their permanent
allocation for sparse events, even if these are extremely important. One of the
possible solutions is the use of cognitive radio techniques to share the available
spectrum with the greatest number of different actors.
Even though a PSN has, in general, humanitarian purposes, it carries highly
sensitive information and security and privacy issues cannot be neglected. Chapter
11 examines the challenges linked to security and privacy for PSNs as well as
different techniques that may be put in place.
Daniel CÂMARA
Central Service of Criminal Intelligence
French National Gendarmerie, Pontoise, France
Navid NIKAEIN
Mobile Communications Department
EURECOM, Sophia Antipolis, France
March 2016
1
Internet of Things in Support of Public
Safety Networks: Opportunities and
Challenges
ChapterwrittenbyIkbalCHAMMAKHIMSADAAandAmineDHRAIEF.
2 WirelessPublicSafetyNetworks2
1.1. Introduction
Today, we are witnessing the dawn of the era of Internet of Things (IoT)
where trillions of physical objects are expected to come online and communicate.
Cisco goes even further by introducing the concept of Internet of Everything (IoE),
which refers to people-to-people, machine-to-people and machine-to-machine
communications[CIS14].
Information and communications technology (ICT) is increasingly becoming a
keycomponentforemergencyresponderstoperformtheirduties.Publicsafety(PS)
organizationsneedICTnotonlyintheirday-to-dayoperationsorforsecuringpublic
events (sport, cultural or political conventions, etc.) but also to deal with unplanned
eventssuchasnaturaldisasters,actsofterrorismorenvironmentalincidents.Sensors
tracking hazardous materials (HAZMAT) leaks, detecting fire or generating gunshot
alerts would help responders to better identify incidents and decide more efficiently
which critical actions to undertake. Furthermore, in a crisis situation, public safety
networks (PSNs) are expected to help the spreading of the information flow among
first aid responders working under different jurisdictions. In this context, digitizing
the physical world through IoT will offer a great potential for PS organizations to
gain a real-time and shared awareness of the crisis situation in spite of the serious
communication disruption caused by an infrastructure that is usually damaged or
totallydestroyed.PSagencieswillrelymoreandmoreonthebring-your-own-device
concept: firstaidresponderswillonlyhavetoinstallspecificappsontheirdevicesto
be used in the incident area. A common PS organization IoT platform wouldensure
that during a crisis incident, cross-jurisdictional coordination, communication and
collaboration between several entities (police, firefighters, military officers, medical
service professionals, volunteer groups, etc). Scattered IoT devices (cams, sensors,
actuators,etc.)canplayasignificantroleevenafterdisasters.Indeed,theycouldhelp
first aid responders to track incident impacts, victim localization and even monitor
their wellness because of wearable or ingestible incorportating sensors. The huge
amount of data generated by the different IoT devices can be further analyzed to
detect criminality patterns or environmental change behaviors; thus helping PS
organizationstoanticipatecrisisandensureabetterdisasterpreparedness.
Today, IoT is becoming more and more a reality: Gartner Inc. forecasts
6.4billionconnectedthingstobeinuseworldwidein2016,andupto20.8billionby
20201. The use of the IoT/IoE paradigms in the field of PS is also supported by the
telecommunications industry as it is expected to be a promising revenue-generating
service. According to Cisco, this market added to other services in the public sector
would generate 4.6 trillion USD of net profit globally in the next decade [BRA 13].
Therefore, governement leaders and PS organizations should start exploring the full
potentialthatIoTcouldoffertoPS.
1http://www.gartner.com/.
InternetofThingsinSupportofPublicSafetyNetworks:OpportunitiesandChallenges 3
The major issue addressed in this chapter is how to take advantage of this
increased global connectedness to be offered by IoT, to save lives and environment
by helping PS organizations to face threats and manage crisis efficiently. Before
exploring these capabilities, we first study in section 1.2 the requirements of PSNs
throughtheidentificationoftypicaldisasterscenarios.Understandingthecomplexity
ofPSNscenarioshelptobetterevaluatetherealpotentialthatcouldbecapturedfrom
theIoT.
Based on these requirements, and after introducing in section 1.3 the IoT
paradigm, we highlight in section 1.4 how the IoT could help face these challenges
and improve responder communication capabilities. After a natural or a man-made
disaster, both cellular and land-line network capabilities will be severely degraded.
Meanwhile, several objects equipped with network interfaces bound to different
accesstechnologieswillbeavailabletothedisasterarea.Animmediateandanatural
interactionbetweenPSNandIoTwouldbetobuildanoverlaynetworkonthetopof
the existing IoT devices to help with sharing information and collaboration between
first-aidresponders.However, suchaninteractionbetweenIoTandPSNneedstobe
furtheranalyzed.Hence,insection1.5,wediscusstherisksandchallengesraisedby
suchaunifiedPSN/IoTplatform.
1.2. RequirementsofPSNs
IdentifyingtheneedsofPSNsisacrucialsteptoassistgovernmentalauthorities,
legislative bodies and the communication industry to have a better understanding of
the challenges in order to prioritize their efforts and develop a strategic and broader
vision for PSNs. Therefore, before exploring the potential and limitaions of the IoT
solutionstosupportthePScommunity,itisimportanttopointoutthroughthissection
the requirements and challenges faced by PS organizations and officials to perform
theirdutiesandactefficiently.
In order to identify those requirements, most of the papers and
projects[BAL14,POR08,MES03,HOM06,HOM08]interestedinPSNsstartby
identifying the typical operational scenarios that could be encountred in the context
ofPSNs.
1.2.1. OperationalPSNscenarios
As depicted in Figure 1.1, to identify the operational scenarios, Baldini et al.
[BAL14]enumeratedthedifferentfunctionsthatneedtobeensuredinthecontextof
PSNs: law enforcement, emergency medical and heath services (EMHS or EMS),
firefighting, etc. Then, the authors identify the typical operational domains in which
PSpersonnelwouldoperateandhighlightthemaincharacteristicofeachdomain: an
4 WirelessPublicSafetyNetworks2
urban environement, for example, with a high density of people and buildings, is
different,fromanoperationalperspective,fromaruralenvironmentwhereitismore
likely to find natural obstacles such as mountains and hills that would not facilitate
the mission of PS responders. Based on the identified operational functions and
domains,theauthorsin[BAL14]discussfive“representative”scenarios(e.g.alarge
natural disaster in a rural area). In each scenario, Baldini et al. point out the
communicationschallengesraisedbythecharacteristicsoftheassociatedoperational
domain and the possible interactions between the PS organizations involved in each
scenario.
Figure1.1. PSNoperationalfunctionsandscenarios[BAL14]
To identify the main operational scenario, the MESA project2 introduces the
conceptofascenarioclass[MES03].
The project aims at supporting the public protection and disaster relief
community by developing the technical specifications of the broadband wireless
applications to be used in this context. The technical development process of the
MESA project attaches great importance to the systems engineering step. It avoids
focusing on scenario-specific solutions and tries to identify common technical
requirementsacrossdifferentPSscenariosinstead.Inthiscontext,theMESAproject
introduces the concept of a scenario class, which is defined based on a combination
of three criteria (as shown in Figure 1.2): (1) environment (indoor, urban, rural),
2Thisproject, originallyknownasPublicSafetyPartnershipProject(PSPP),isajointwork
thatstartedinMay2000betweentheEuropeanTelecommunicationsStandardsInstitute(ETSI)
andtheTelecommunicationsIndustryAssociation(TIA).
