Internet Engineering Task Force H. Ohno INTERNET-DRAFT R. Atarashi Communications Research Lab., Japan November 2001 The Emergency Communications on the internet draft-hohno-ecs-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Abstract It will be strongly required to provide internet services even in an emergency since the internet is one of the most important communication infrastructures. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare special communication functoin such as victims' information exchange and the disaster information transmission system. It is also necessary to introduce priority control mechanism for the emergency communication. We need to start discussion about the emergency communication systems on the Internet. 1. Introduction The importance of the internet has been increasing even in an emergency situation such as natural disasters and terrible attack by terrorism. On the next generation Internet, it will be strongly required to provide reliable internet services even in an emergency Ohno, et.al. [Page 1] Internet Draft The Emergency Communications July 2001 since the internet is one of the most important communication infrastructures. In order to continue developing the new internet service and it standardization, definitions of a number of new functions and consensus for operation are necessary. They are not only in one layer but are also related to many other layers. It is also recommended that a large number of people from many fields such as governments, administrations, carriers, operators, researchers and developers are expected to attend this standardization activity. The following two issues are the purpose of this memo. 1. To start discussion about the status of measures for the emergency communications in each organization. 2. To start discussion about establishing the cooperation and collaboration system about emergency communications in the world. 2. The internet in an emergency In this chapter, we discuss and define some concepts in this memo. 2.1 In an emergency In this memo, we define "in an emergency" as the situation that the people and their life may be damaged by unexpected and dangerous situation, such as natural disaster or accident. The special operations are required to recover from the damages. For example, when the big earthquake or flood occurs, many people are damaged, some people may disappear, and rescues activities are required in these circumstances. 2.2 The internet infrastructure in an emergency The internet communication is a very good solution for data transmission. Especially text data transmission using the internet has long and sucessful history. Even if the communication quality is insufficient and data transmission is often failed because of the damage by the disaster, information exchange can be achieved because it is possible to transmit small size of divided data over the internet. The topology and routing mechanism of the internet add Ohno, et.al. [Page 2] Internet Draft The Emergency Communications July 2001 redundancy to the internet. Therefore, if a part of lines is damaged, transmitted data can bypass the point of failure and reach to the destination. Generally, the natural disaster area severely is restricted, however the communication infrastructure operates normally outside of this area. 2.3 The internet services in an emergency When a large-scale natural disaster occurs, disaster victims need to exchange information with other victims or people outside disaster area in a frequent manner. WWW and database services for publish several information about disaster are required. It SHOULD make use of the internet more effectively in an emergency, it is required to make discussions and consensus at the IETF. 3. Internet technology in an emergency. Some communication functions are necessary in an emergency stuation. For example, victims' information exchange and the disaster information transmission are necessary in the disaster area. As for the internet, even these scenes play an important part of communication function. And the internet MUST keep playing an important role. In this section, we describe the emergency communication support system that we have being developing and evaluating, and priority control on the emergency communications. And we have been insisting its about the necessity to standardize many functions for the emergency communications on the internet. 3.1 The emergency communication support system WIDE(Widely Integrated Distributed Environment) project, a well- known research consortium on the internet technology in Japan, has been developing an emergency communication system called IAA (which is named after "I am alive") since 1995. [1] This system consists of various user interfaces and scalable and robust distributed database system. It has already supported many actual recovery activities in natural disaster in Japan. It provides registration and retrieval of information for victims. Since these systems are expected to prepare each country or each Ohno, et.al. [Page 3] Internet Draft The Emergency Communications July 2001 organization, the function of an emergency information exchange is required. The standards for an emergency information exchange model and data exchange protocol for distributed database and usage of metadata (structure data about data, it indicate contents of information) are required. 3.2 The priority control on the emergency communications It SHOULD give more priority to the emergency communications than the usual communications. The communication of an emergency is required with higher priority than other communications. The priority control on the emergency communications (voice data and multimedia communication) has been discussed on some documents such as ITU-T E.106 and F.706 Recommendation.[3][4] The priority control of the internet is required additional considerations. The introduction of the data management scheme such as using "metadata" may be necessary to indicate that the emergency information SHOULD be processed immediately. We MUST proceed with the standardization of the policy of the priority control in the emergency communication. 4. Discussion According to the discussion, we found many standardization activities and consensus were needed across the several layers in order to provide reliable internet services continuously in an emergency. These functions described below are examples that standardizations are required. - Priority control policy - Operation policy - Victims information exchange model - Victims information exchange protocol for distributed databases - Some other mechanisms bridge over several independent emergency communications systems Ohno, et.al. [Page 4] Internet Draft The Emergency Communications July 2001 5. Milestones Dec 01 Submit the first Internet-Draft of the emergency communications. Dec 01 Meet at Salt Lake City as BOF to review the first Internet-Draft and discussion. Mar 01 Submit the second Internet-Draft of the emergency communications. Mar 01 Meet at Minneapolis as BOF to review the second Internet-Draft and discussion. Jul 02 Meet at Yokohama to discussion. 6. Summary We described necessarily of the emergency communications on the internet and insist about the necessity to standardize many internet functions in an emergency. 7. References [1] Nobuhiko TADA, Yukimitsu IZAWA, Masahiko KIMOTO, Taro MARUYAMA, Hiroyuki OHNO, Masaya NAKAYAMA, "IAA System (I Am Alive)": The Experiences of the Internet Disaster Drills", INET'00, 2000, June. [2] IAA system home pages, http://www.crl-iaa.net, http://www.iaa.wide.ad.jp/ [3] ITU-T Recommendation E.106 (2000), International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS) [4] ITU-T Recommendation F.706 (2001), International Emergency Multimedia Services (IEMS) 8. Author's Address Hiroyuki Ohno Communications Research Laboratory 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi Koganei Tokyo 184-8795 Japan TEL: +1 81 42 327 5542 FAX: +1 81 42 327 7941 Email: hohno@ohnolab.org Rei S. Atarashi Communications Research Laboratory 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi Koganei Tokyo 184-8795 Japan TEL: +1 81 42 327 5542 FAX: +1 81 42 327 7941 Email: ray@ohnolab.org Ohno, et.al. [Page 5]