Related Literature

In the past few years, mobile technology has rapidly growing and improving from its limited
capabilities at the very first mobile phones and now supports multiple variety of
functionalities.

Mobile technology assists in enhancing disaster reporting, emergency coordination, early

warning systems. It also improves the communication of the public from local government
officials to its constituents in times of crisis [4]. Manila ranks 4th in the world as the most at
risk from disasters [5] and sufferings from natural disasters cannot be avoided, creating
proper awareness and developing suitable warning system, disaster preparedness and
management through application of information technology tools would be of help in
minimizing the impacts. GIS and remote sensing and internet are main applications that
can be used to manage disasters [6]. [6] A study conducted by Philip Sperry stated that
technology plays a big role in disaster management though it is not possible to fully avoid
the natural disasters, but the impacts and sufferings can be reduced by improving the
community's awareness and preparedness through application of information technology
tools. Lowiti found that there has been a steady integration of mobile phones when it comes
to emergency and disaster management, cash transfers through mobile-phone for sensitive
populations, fundraising for emergency kits and as a means of getting emergency support
services to crises populations [7].

Similar android applications catering to disaster preparedness, awareness and response

have been developed for other countries but there are also some that are developed and
implemented here in the country.

Batingaw is a disaster management mobile application designed to run on smartphones and

other mobile devices adopted by the Office of Civil Defense-National Disaster Risk
Reduction and Management Council (OCD-NDRRMC) as a communication tool to help
reduce and mitigate the disastrous effects of human and natural made hazards to vulnerable
communities with and also, the mobile app can be used to give government agencies,
organizations and individuals, immediate access to disaster warnings, advisories, location
data, and disaster mappings [8]. In addition, the app also enables users to contribute
information to emergency agencies more easily and quickly. PINDOT (Provincial
Information Network on Disaster Occurrences and Threats) is an application created by
Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) and the Province of Albay that is designed to enable
faster coordination during emergencies to facilitate immediate rescue and response. It has
an active listing of various concerned government and non-government offices, which are
also mapped to aid in planning and decision making. The application now includes a user-
friendly content [9].

Triple Zero (000) is an emergency hotline in Australia just like the current 911 in the
Philippines. This application was created for Triple Zero that can run in different mobile
application platforms. This application gives the user his or her GPS coordinates to be read
out to the emergency operator, gives the caller or user an information when to call Triple
Zero, and provides information of who to call in non-emergency situations [10]. Another
mobile application named as Emergency App is a standalone application that contains a
panic button that will send alert the user's friends, family members and emergency numbers
of different departments that may provide emergency response such as police, ambulances,
and fire trucks [11].

Today, there are hundreds of existing mobile applications for disaster management. Most of
which are already quite successful with impressive feedbacks proving that technology is not
only for entertainment purposes but also as an innovative tool that is continuously evolving
to improve saving and reducing the loss of lives. The proposed system aims to allow the
residents not just to seek aid from the officials and have direct contact with them but to
participate and coordination via a pre-defined status updates whether they are safe or not
through a localized mapping feature wherein local government official can specify which
areas are affected.

Disaster Management
Natural disaster management in communication networks has become increasingly
important due to society's growing dependence on telecommunications. Among many
aspects of disaster management, network recovery during and after disasters, and robust
network design including provisioning to cope with disasters have attracted the most
attention from researchers worldwide. As additional methods, some temporary systems
such as portable terrestrial stations for satellite communications may be used.

Network recovery includes all reactions to failures that occur during and after disasters that
are done in order to minimize the bad effects caused by the disasters on networks. Different
mechanisms for network recovery have been proposed. Gardner et al. proposed a routing
algorithm pre-planned for geographically correlated failures to reduce the impact of route
changes that causes routing instability after failure [4]. Dikbiyik et al. proposed a
mechanism for reprovisioning connections under the risk of correlated cascading or
sequential failures right after the initial impact of disaster, to quickly recover disrupted
connections and minimize the risk of further failures [5]. Mukherjee suggested that if the
time and location of a disaster can be forecast, some actions should be taken before the
occurrence of disasters, such as reallocating network resources so that network elements in
the predicted disaster area are used as little as possible [6].

Different from network recovery, which is reactive, robust network design is a proactive
method of coping with with disasters. A straightforward approach is resource provisioning
to enhance the survival probability during disasters. The work in [7] is a typical example.
Another approach, which well complements the provisioning approach, is to plan physical
networks to avoid disaster-prone areas. Cao et al [8] discussed the optimization of the
physical route of undersea cables. Given a geometrical route configuration such as a
rectangular route, they minimize cable costs while maintaining a probability of connecting
two cities that is higher than the threshold. Saito proposed a spatial network design method
for determining the geographical shape of a physical network by optimizing a metric such as
the probability that every route between two given nodes intersects a disaster area [9].
Unfortunately, these works are not directly applicable if we need to take into account streets
and roads to install physical links, and if earthquakes that will occur with high probability
are specified, as mentioned above. Hence, in this work, we address the robust physical
network design problem on the basis of actual seismic hazard information provided by the
Japan Seismic Hazard Information Station (J-SHIS) operated by NIED and geographical
street maps to obtain a more practical and realistic solution. The proposed method in this
article introduces a new step in disaster management in addition to existing approaches
such as provisioning and recovering. It provides a method for geographically placing
network cables to make them robust against earthquakes on the basis of quantitative risk
evaluation. Here, the network should already contain provisioned alternative routes and
spare resources.