Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks Article A Cloud Based Disaster Management System Omar Cheikhrouhou 1,2,* , Anis Koubaa 3,4 and Anis Zarrad 5,* 1 College of Information Technology and Computer Science, Taif University, Taif 26571, Saudi Arabia 2 Computer and Embedded Systems Laboratory, Sfax University, Sfax 3029, Tunisia 3 CISTER/INESC-TEC, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, 4200 Porto, Portugal;
[email protected] 4 Department of Computer Science, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh 12435, Saudi Arabia 5 School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham Dubai, Dubai 73000, UAE * Correspondence:
[email protected] (O.C.);
[email protected] (A.Z.) Received: 23 November 2019; Accepted: 6 January 2020; Published: 13 January 2020 Abstract: The combination of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and 3D virtual environments opens a new paradigm for their use in natural disaster management applications. It is important to have a realistic virtual environment based on datasets received from WSNs to prepare a backup rescue scenario with an acceptable response time. This paper describes a complete cloud-based system that collects data from wireless sensor nodes deployed in real environments and then builds a 3D environment in near real-time to reflect the incident detected by sensors (fire, gas leaking, etc.). The system’s purpose is to be used as a training environment for a rescue team to develop various rescue plans before they are applied in real emergency situations. The proposed cloud architecture combines 3D data streaming and sensor data collection to build an efficient network infrastructure that meets the strict network latency requirements for 3D mobile disaster applications.