A Resource-Saving Shelter Selection Approach for Large-Scale Area Emergency

Most disaster evacuation approaches prioritize the best possible shelters for people based on their escape time. However, it is observed that lots of people continuously try to contact or travel to their relatives and friends after they safely arrived at shelters. This results in the occupation of communication and transportation resources and causes traffic congestion and internet blocking. Resources in disaster are insufficient and should be reserved for emergencies. This article proposed a resource-saving approach, resource-saving shelter selection approach (RSSA) in short, which determines shelters for people by considering their relationships and locations. In other words, people are gathered with whom they care to the same shelter to maximize the resource-saving for disaster relief. In addition, RSSA is designed standalone on mobile devices to cope with the inevitable network failures. The simulation results reveal that 23% of traveling costs are saved by RSSA compared to other approaches.