Ad hoc networking and ambient intelligence to support future disaster response

We present a vision of how ambient intelligent environments may be used in future to support the emergency services during first response to a major incident. A futuristic scenario is presented where, for each of the emergency services, Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technologies are used to support communication amongst the members of a virtual team. AmI is further used to enable cross service communication and coordination, e.g., between police, firefighters and ambulance teams, which may include transborder and transnational cooperation. The application therefore is an example of extended enterprise computing systems incorporating inter-organisational and international dimensions. It therefore addresses the themes of (AmI enabled) Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support inter-enterprise collaboration and collaboration between virtual teams. We examine the future and emerging technologies needed to realize this vision of ambient intelligent support for the rescue services. One of the emerging technologies is ad hoc networking. In this paper we focus on the possibilities and challenges raised by combining fixed infrastructure networks with ad hoc networks to support ambient intelligent services for major incident management.