IoT in Disaster Managment

Disaster Chain, Project developed for Microsoft code.fun.do hackathon 2018

Won Second-Runner’s Up position, at the National Round of Microsoft AXLE 2019

Background

After going through several studies of Post-Disaster scenarios, we came about this idea of developing a low-cost IoT solution, capable of reducing the impact of such situations and compliant with the existing Smart Home solutions.
We felt that targeting a Specific Calamity cannot have a good enough impact for a larger population. Hence, we propose our project split into parts focusing on different calamities, with a plan to integrate them all together under one common disaster service.

Part #1: Earthquake management system

It is a distributed IOT based solution for earthquake detection and along with an early warning system. Implemented using Raspberry Pi as a central Hub for multiple IoT solutions. Smaller battery-powered Node MCU units are deployed in different rooms of a given building providing real-time data to the central hub through API calls. These low-powered Node-MCU units act as slave boards in the network. They are capable of handling both security and automation in the individual rooms, connected over wireless channels (Wi-Fi) to the central IoT hub.

The central hub is connected to Azure through REST API calls to provide a dashboard monitoring system and as an early warning system. The central hub is connected to Azure through REST API calls to provide a dashboard monitoring system and as an early warning system to detect the earthquakes and act accordingly.

It is the responsibility of the central IoT hub for safety protocols such as,

Killing the Power.

Killing the gas supply to prevent a further hazard to people.

Killing the water supply of the building to prevent any chances of short circuit.

A sound-based warning system.

Tracking the number of people inside to ensure everyone left the building.

Part #2: Skin disease prediction after Floods

We used Custom Vision service of Azure cognitive services to predict the different type of skin disease which may arise during a flood scenario. We made an accompanying Web App/Android App that communicates with Custom Vision service through REST API calls. This service is available in offline mode also, which allows the Android App to function even in the situation where the network is inaccessible.

This comes in very useful during a situation of Flood and Tsunami. The Web/Android App is targeted to:

Eliminate the need Medical Test when there is lack of infrastructure during a calamity.

Provide a faster diagnosis.

Provide faster medical diagnoses.

Part #3: Hurricane & Tornado

The central hub checks the local news servers regularly, for any early warning signs. In case it finds any, immediately raises the alarm. Under Planning

Part #4: Blockchain-based Disaster Management Tracking

We plan to use Ethereum Blockchain and Smart Contracts built using Azure Blockchain Workbench to smartly facilitate and track Disaster Relief Management.

The key idea is to

Keep an accurate footprint of the statistics about disasters, making them publicly available
and untameable by the government or any authority.

Make publicly available the government and donation expenditure for relief arrangements

Track material resources sent to impacted areas using blockchain and IoT based devices, to
ensure that help reaches where it needs to.

We intend to implement Smart Contracts to execute essential tasks automatically without any dependence on government action and decision. The executions include:

Automated Warning systems.
Managing the Transportation Chain for relief resources.
Automatic fund release for affected places.
Unbiased execution in tracking unregulated usage of funds.

Project Information

GitHub YouTube News : ToI Microsoft

Aksh Chordia, Anshul Ahuja, Ayush Saxena

(Team: The DarkSide, IIT Jodhpur)

Author Aksh Chordia

Aksh Chordia is a B-Tech Pre-final year undergrad student from Electrical Engineering Dept. at IIT Jodhpur. He is an active electronics enthusiast with primary interest towards IoT devices and their integration. This motivation towards electronics helped him to become the Captain of Electronics Club at IIT Jodhpur. He is also passionate to automobiles and has internship experiences with TVS Motor , India