Special Session 8

In many real-world internet of things (IoT) applications, there is a requirement for timely data collection and reporting. Disaster management requires a coordinated effort involving remote capture and monitoring of data from the affected area in order to facilitate timely response for rescue, relocation, food and water provisioning through to the restoration of vital services such as telecommunications and transport. The growing use of IoT devices equipped with antenna and meteorological sensors can be used to collect data from remote environment. A collection of such devices are able to form a wireless sensor network and gather required information and send it to other devices or base stations which are out of the transmission range to provide early warning detection. However, there are several issues for effective employment of these systems such as: dynamic and intelligent management of the IoT sensors and devices on the ground, limited power of IoT devices, communication between IoT devices, accuracy of meteorological sensors as well as connectivity of the IoT devices and coverage of the region of interest.

This special session aims at bringing together scholars from academia and industry to discuss and present the latest research and findings on all the aspects of IoT for disaster management.

Topics of interest include but are not restricted to:

• Deployment of meteorological sensors for disaster monitoring;
• Communication Architectures;
• Security and privacy in disaster management;
• Energy harvesting and power management of IoT devices;
• Reliability and accuracy of meteorological sensors for disaster monitoring;
• Connectivity and coverage;
• Wireless Sensor and actuator networks for disaster management;
• Data fusion and aggregation;
• Cloud/edge/fog computing for disaster management;
• Modelling and Performance evaluations;
• Connectivity and coverage;
• Novel applications of IoT in disaster management;
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for disaster management.

Dr Anisi is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex and head of Internet of Everything (IoE) Laboratory. Prior to that, he worked as a Senior Research Associate at University of East Anglia, UK and Senior Lecturer at University of Malaya, Malaysia where he received ‘Excellent Service Award’ for his achievements.
His research has focused specifically on real world application domains such as energy management, transportation, healthcare and other potential life domains. As a computer scientist, he has designed and developed novel architectures and routing protocols for Internet of Things (IoT) enabling technologies including wireless sensor and actuator networks, vehicular networks, heterogeneous networks, body area networks and his research results have directly contributed to the technology industry. He has strong collaboration with industry and working with several companies in the UK with the focus on monitoring and automation systems based on IoT concept capable of reliable and seamless generation, transmission, processing and demonstration of data.
He has published more than 80 articles in high quality journals and several conference papers and won two medals for his innovations from PECIPTA 2015 and IIDEX 2016 expositions. He has received several International and national funding awards for his fundamental and practical research as PI and Co-I.
Dr Anisi is an associate editor of a number of journals including ‘IEEE Access’, ‘Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks’, ‘IET Wireless Sensor Systems’, 'International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks'. ‘KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems journals’ and ‘Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks’. He has been guest editor of special issues of the journals and Lead organizer of special sessions and workshops at IEEE conferences such as IEEE CAMAD, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE VTC and etc. He has been also serving as executive/technical committee member of several conferences.
Hossein is Fellow of Higher Education Academy and Senior Member of IEEE. He is also a technical committee member of Finnish-Russian University Cooperation in Telecommunications (FRUCT), Senior Member of Institute of Research Engineers and Doctors (the IRED), Member of ACM, IEEE Council on RFID, IEEE Sensors Council, IEEE Systems Council and International Association of Engineers (IAENG).

Dr. Pelin Angin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering in Middle East Technical University, Turkey. She got her B.S. degree in Computer Engineering at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. Dr. Angin worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Purdue University in the 2014-2015 academic year, and then as a Postdoctoral Research Associate until December 2016. Her research interests lie in the fields of mobile-cloud computing, IoT security, wireless networks and blockchain. She is affiliated with the Systems Security Research Laboratory (S2RL) and the Wireless Systems, Networks and Cybersecurity Research Laboratory at METU. Her research in security and computer networks has been published in various prominent journals including IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing and Journal of Network and Computer Applications among others. She has served on the editorial boards of various IoT and wireless communications journals and on the program committees of top-tier conferences including VLDB, SIGMOD, IEEE ICIOT etc.