Don Jeremiah Gabriel | Iain Johnston | Dominique Salas | Christian Villegas
School of Information Technology
Erna-Kristi Martinez, Adviser
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, the Philippines have been battered by different man-made and natural disasters. Despite its magnificent and natural beauty, the country suffers from these devastations. These events can result in the abrupt destruction of houses or buildings, leaving individuals unable to evacuate and trapped beneath the rubble. In most situations, people will have their smartphones on them. Smartphone device has become an integral part of both our professional and personal lives. These smartphones can be utilized for rescue in various emergency scenarios, reducing the difficulties and time required for rescuers to rescue victims. This study proposes a system called “PingMyLocation” that can be used as a tool to help rescuers locate victims. PingMyLocation is divided into four components — mobile application for disaster victims, mobile application for rescuers, web map and a router. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the major part implemented to serve as an intermediary for devices communication. BLE was chosen by the researchers due to its low energy consumption, pairless connection, multiple connections, and availability on mobile phones. PingMyLocation was developed using the Rapid Application Development (RAD). The proponents conducted interviews to determine the user requirements and several testings to test the functions and effectiveness of the system. The result of this study is a mobile application that lets victims broadcast their GPS location. The victim’s mobile application is also programmed with a sound alarm. The sound alarm will trigger if a rescuer’s mobile application is in close proximity and scanning. The data gathered by the rescuer’s mobile app will be sent to the web server. The web server will then consolidate the data, process and ultimately render it as a location marker on the web map.
Keywords: disaster, close proximity, sound alarm, BLE, GPS
