Situation-based alerting strategies in early warning systems

The emergence of wireless infrastructures in terms of available sensors and devices open a complete new functional vision also for classical applications such as Early Warning Systems (EWS). The demand for new approaches in the application field of EWS is increasing with the worldwide need for better, more efficient disaster protection. In the recent years, the research in the field of EWS has made a significant progress in terms of better hazard detection in particular by using new wireless technologies such as sensor networks. In terms of better warning generation and alert dissemination, the potentials of new wireless infrastructures, namely context awareness, are not exploited yet. Experiences with existing EWS indicate that the effectiveness of warning and alerting can be significantly increased when the context of the receiver is considered. In this paper, we present an approach for targeted and efficient alerting strategies in EWS based on the context of receivers and receiver groups in wireless communication infrastructures.