A Concept of Community Care System and Community Information Network

Transcription

1 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA' A Concept of Community Care System and Community Information Network Ayami Manaka 1, Akio Ogata 2, Hirohide Matsuzaka 2, Hayato Taniguchi 2, Masaya Nomoto 2, Minoru Fukuzaki 2,Hiroshi Ishii 2, Yasuhiro Nozawa 3, and Keisuke Utsu 2 1 Graduate Sch. of Information and Telecommunication Engineering, Tokai University, Minato City, Tokyo, Japan 2 Sch. of Information and Telecommunication Engineering, Tokai University, Minato City, Tokyo, Japan 3 Collaboration Project Section, Minato City, Tokyo, Japan Abstract - To enable the citizens to send their safety information using smartphones to the city government or its branches, we are studying and developing Community Care System (CCS). We are taking into account of real circumstances in Minato City, Tokyo, Japan, as a model case of CCS. In addition, we also developing Community Information Network (CIN), which is a network service platform to support CCS. CIN provides CCS with connectivity between citizen s smartphones and servers of city government and at the same time provides access from not only citizen but tourism to the Internet. This paper reports the concept of the CCS, the prototype development of one of CCS functions (services), the concept of CIN, and the prototype development of access point devices of CIN. Keywords: Community, Application, Network 1 Introduction Japanese society is aging rapidly that results in the increase of the number of elderly people that are living alone. Traditionally, people living in a close-knit community have helped each other out. Today, such social ties are becoming weaker particularly in urban areas, which is making it difficult to confirm the well-being of elderly or physically handicapped people on a daily basis. The problem is becoming more and more serious because confirmation of their well-being depends on inefficient ways such as telephone calls or visits made by social workers who are increasingly overstretched and in short supply. One solution of this problem is to improve the efficiency of collecting and sharing the information on the well-being of these vulnerable people on a regular basis using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs which are now widely used in Japan. Japan has a well-developed communication infrastructure. According to a report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the percentage of smartphone users aged 60 or older is rapidly on the rise. It was 7.3% in fiscal year 2013 compared to 3.4% in the previous year [1]. The authors expect that this percentage will continue to increase rapidly in the near future as people in their 50s and early 60s, who routinely use their smartphones for business and private purposes, join the ranks of the elderly. In light of the above circumstances, we are developing, in collaboration with the Minato Ward Office in Tokyo, a community care system (CCS) that is designed to meet local needs for confirming the well-being of the elderly on a regular basis. An experiment is being conducted in an area in Takanawa, Minato city, Tokyo. This area was chosen as a model case because the Minato Ward has a dense population in which the proportion of elderly people is rising rapidly and will come to characterize many other localities in Japan in the near future. This paper reports the concepts of CCS and the prototype development of one of the functions (services) of CCS. In addition, we are developing a Community Information Network (CIN) which supports CCS application by providing wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) connections, in the area. The paper also reports the concepts of CIN and the prototype development of access point (AP) devices. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the concept of CCS and the prototype development of the system which is one of the functions (services) of tccs. Section 3 introduces the concept of the CIN and the prototype development of AP devices. Lastly, Section 5 summarizes this paper. 2 Community Care System, CCS 2.1 Concept of CCS In the near future, an insufficiency of the support staffs becomes more serious due to progression of aging. The number of people who have no support person for the daily or emergency situations will be increased. We develop CCS to tackle the above problems by realizing the following functions 1) and 2). 1) Safety confirmation for elderly and/or handicapped people The safety confirmation for elderly people and handicapped people is made by telephone and patrols by social workers. However, the ways are insufficient solutions in the metropolitan area such as Minato city. There is another way to apply services which are provided by network carriers or

2 534 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA'15 communication device manufacturers. However, the installation and running costs are so expensive that the way is difficult to apply in the areas. Therefore, an alternative way which can be realized at a low cost is needed. further issues to be studied. The implementation of the application on other OSs will be studied in the future. 2) Local information notifications by the local government: Local information such as daily information, event announcements, and emergency notifications are provided by message boards, handbills, and radio broadcast in general. The information provision should be realized more quickly and certainly. 2.2 Outline of the safety confirmation and notification system We are planning to build up the CCS in step-by-step manner. As the first step, we develop the prototype of the safety confirmation and notification service system. This system is server-client based and application software is defined in each side of server and user. This system assumes that the necessary servers are installed in the ward office and/or its branch offices and that users, i.e., elderly people, have smartphones. The administrator at the ward office or a branch office sends users a message containing an inquiry about their well-being and a list of possible answers. The user can send a response to the question by simple touch operation (selection of answer) on his/her smartphone. Then, the administrator confirms responses from the users and takes appropriate action if needed. In an actual operation, the messages will be sent regularly. Since the system facilitates the workload reduction for the ward office staffs and social workers, it can contribute to realizing the function 1) in Section 2.1. In addition to the inquiry messages, daily information, event announcements, and emergency notifications are also sent to the citizen. By sending those information by the system, to the citizen, the citizens can share the information more quickly and certainly. Hence the system can contribute to realizing the function 2) in Section The prototype of the safety confirmation and notification system The prototype of the safety confirmation and notification system is configured as shown in Fig. 1. Our experimental system uses a virtual machine on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which is an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). The OS of the server is Ubuntu LTS. A Web server, Apache2, and a database, MySQL, run on it. The server side application is implemented using PHP (Hypertext Processer). The user needs to have a smartphone or a tablet that runs on Android (version 4.0 or higher), and also to be in an environment that allows access to the Internet. The implementation on other platforms is a Fig. 1 System prototype configuration of the safety confirmation and notification system Server side application The administrator logs into the system by entering his/her user name and password. After that, Admin screen #1 (Fig. 2) appears. It has Notify, Confirm and Register buttons. The administrator registers users in advance on Admin screen #2 (Fig. 2). The server identifies a user terminal using the MAC address of the Wi-Fi communication device mounted on the terminal because a MAC address is unique to each terminal. The administrator composes a request for information about the user s general condition on Admin screen #3 (Fig. 2). The administrator enters a question and possible answers on this screen and can also include information about precautions in daily life and upcoming events in the request message. When the administrator clicks the Send button, the request message is sent to user terminals. The administrator can read user responses on Admin screen #4 (Fig. 2). The information on this screen is updated in real time as responses arrive. The list of response messages can be sorted by user name, question, answer, and response date and time Users side application Messages requesting information about the well-being of users are sent to user terminals via the Internet. The request information is automatically displayed on the user terminal screen. The user can reply by simple touch operation because a list of possible answers to choose is displayed. For example, to the question Please answer your health condition., possible answers are: Reply 1: Good, Reply 2: Not good, Reply 3: I need consultation / I have a question and Reply 4: Nearby people are in trouble.

3 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA' Admin screen #1 Admin screen #2 Administrator Admin screen #3 Admin screen #4 Request Reply User User terminal screen #1 User terminal screen #2 replied Fig. 2 Screen transition of CCS application 2.4 Example of use Examples of messages, questions, and answer choices assumed to be sent are as follows. Example 1: general notifications and questions Message: In Minato city, the highest temperature will be more than 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) today. Please be careful about heat stroke. Please answer your health condition. Answer choice 1: Good Answer choice 2: Not good Answer choice 3: I need consultation / I have a question Example 2: event announcements and questions Message: In Minato city, x festival will be held at x park at 10:00am, Today. Please come and visit. Please answer your health condition. Answer choice 1: Good Answer choice 2: Not good Answer choice 3: I need consultation / I have a question Example 3: emergency notifications and questions Message: We have just experienced a big earthquake in Minato City. Tsunami will not occur. Please answer your safety. Answer choice 1: Safe and not injured Answer choice 2: Minor injured but can move Answer choice 3: Can t move Example 4: emergency notifications and questions Message: A typhoon is coming soon. Please refrain from unnecessary going out. Please answer your health condition. Answer choice 1: Good Answer choice 2: Not good Answer choice 3: I need consultation / I have a question 2.5 Issues to be improved In the future, we plan to improve the following issues of the prototype system. Each number of people who made each choice should be visible on the administrator side. In particular, since a person may be identified by using information such as date of birth, there are some citizens who hesitate to register such personal information. The safety information of the citizen who requires daily support should be highlighted. The system should enable the citizen to upload optionally his present location which is obtained by GPS (Global Positioning System) on his terminal.

4 536 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA'15 Since city newsletters are published every 10 days, the inquiry and notification message should be sent with them. It can be expected that the administrator obtain the responses from the citizens more certainly. 3 Community Information Network, CIN 3.1 Needs of CIN As locally launched communication network services, access points have been equipped to provide tourists with public Wi-Fi services in Japan [2][3]. On the other hand, as a technology, IEEE802.11s mesh network has been studied [4]. Hence, CIN will make the most of those services. We consider that there are following 2 requirements to realize the CIN. Fig. 3 An example of a streetlamp at Merry-road Takanawa 1) The CIN makes it possible for the residents and/or tourists to be provided the internet connection service by deploying Wi-Fi APs. As a result, CIN makes it possible for the users to use the application everywhere in the city even when the infrastructures of communication carriers are unavailable due to disasters. 2) Even when the infrastructures of communication carriers are unavailable due to disasters, CIN makes it possible for the users to use the application. 3.2 Concept of CIN To satisfy the requirements and at low costs, we are considering CIN as follows. First let us consider the AP. In Merry Road Takanawa area, many streetlamps have been equipped by Minato-city government. An example of a streetlamp is shown in Fig.3. As an interval between any two streetlamps is around 20 meters, we assume to equip the APs on these streetlamps. Each AP is assumed to be furnished with 2 radio interfaces. The one interface runs ad hoc mode to communicate with other APs, and the other one runs infrastructure mode to communicate with user terminals in its coverage. Next, the CIN is composed of a number of sub-areas, each of which is composed of several APs, as shown in Fig. 4. An AP in each sub-area is a gateway to other sub-areas and/or the external network (Internet). How to realize the connections among sub-areas and between the CIN and the internet needs further study. The network performance of broadcast and unicast communication among APs in for a model assuming of the CIN sub-area by network simulations are shown in [5][6]. Fig.4 CIN and CCS application 3.3 Prototype development of AP To facilitate the development of the practical APs to deploy CIN in the future, we develop and evaluates a prototype AP by use of a Raspberry Pi board [7]. The board is a low cost and single-board microcomputer and equips an ARM processor, developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation in the United Kingdom. Since the board is low price, Linuxcompliant, and it runs with a low energy consumption, we can easily implement the AP functions on it. Two wireless LAN adaptors are installed in each AP. The one is running as the ad hoc mode for the inter-ap channel (IF0) for multi-hop LAN, and the other one is running as the infrastructure mode for connections with the user terminals (IF1). This study adopts Raspberry Pi Type B as shown in Fig.5. We develop a set of 4 APs by Raspberry Pi type B boards with the spec shown in Table 1. The board is credit card sized. It has a CPU, 2 USB ports, a HDMI port, and a Wired LAN port. The OS of the board is Raspbian OS, on top of which necessary functions are implemented. Two USB connected wireless LAN adaptors are installed on the board. The adaptor for IF0 is running on the ad hoc mode and uses IEEE802.11g as the MAC layer. The adaptor for IF1 is running on the infrastructure mode by hostapd [8], and uses IEEE802.11g as the MAC layer.

5 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA' A multi-hop network is constructed by the static routing as shown in Fig.6. Actually, a dynamic routing protocol should be applied to the routing. A suitable routing protocol will be adopted in the further study. In the experiment, the number of APs between the user terminals (n) is assumed to be 2, 3, or 4, i.e. the number of hops in the inter-aps channel (n-1) becomes 1, 2, or 3, For each of three cases, the throughputs are evaluated. User terminals x and y are connected to AP_0 and AP_n, respectively. The experiment is made in indoors. The distance between the adjacent APs and that between the AP and the user terminal are 10m. User terminal x generates traffics using Netperf [9]. In the measurement of the TCP throughput, the maximum volume of the load (i.e. line rate) is generated, then the throughput is calculated by the volume of the exchanged traffic. In the measurement of the UDP throughput, the maximum volume of the load is generated, then the throughput is calculated by the volume of the received packets at User terminal y. The throughput of TCP and UDP were observed for 60 samples, the maximum 5 and minimum 5 samples were discarded, and then 50 samples were evaluated. The mesurement results are shown in Fig. 7. The deviation bars in the graphs show the standard deviations of the evaluated values. Here, the throughput values were decreased as the number of hops increased. This was due to contention resolution mechanisms in CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Avoidance) on the wireless LAN MAC layer. In the future, we plan to develop the practical and costeffective APs and also study and implement a suitable dynamic routing protocol on them. Finally we will execute field tests by deploying the APs in the town street. Table 1 Spec of Raspberry Pi Type B board CPU BCM2835, 700MHz RAN 512MBytes USB port 2 ports Board size in 2.22 in Price USD Throughput [Mbps] Fig. 6 Network composition of the experiment 2.52 Fig. 7 Experiment result of TCP and UDPthroughput 4 Summary 5.10 We are studying to develop CCS and CIN taking the real situations in Takanawa, Minato city, Tokyo, as a model case. This paper introduced the concept of CCS and CIN. As CCS, the paper showed the development and test installation of the safety confirmation and notification system which is one of the functions of CCS. In the future, we plan to make the test installation of the system and to improve it. As CIN, the paper showed the prototype development of the AP devices. The multi-hop wireless network was configured and the throughput was evaluated in the experiment. In the future, we plan to make field tests using them. 5 Acknowledgments The num. of hops in the inter-ap channel TCP Throughput UDP Throughput This study has been supported by the following funds. COC (Center of Community), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan KAKENHI , Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. 6 References Fig. 5 Raspberry Pi board [1] Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Japan, _1.pdf, 2014

6 538 Int'l Conf. Par. and Dist. Proc. Tech. and Appl. PDPTA'15 [2] Kobe City, KOBE Free Wi-Fi, html [3] Fukuoka City, Fukuoka City Wi-Fi, [4] Shiro Sakata, Akira Yamada, Hiroyuki Iizuka, Tetsuya Ito, Trend on Wireless LAN Mesh Network, J. IEICE, Vol.92, No.10, pp , 2009 [5] Ayami Manaka, Keisuke Utsu, Chee Onn Chow, Yasuhiro Nozawa, Minoru Fukuzaki, Hiroshi Ishii, An Application of Broadcast Based Information Sharing System to A Community Information Network, MJIIT-JUC Joint International Symposium 2014, , 2014 [6] Ayami Manaka, Tomomi Itoh, Yasuhiro Nozawa, Chee Onn Chow, Minoru Fukuzaki, Hiroshi Ishii, Keisuke Utsu, "Performance Evaluation of a Community Information Network for a Daily Life Support System", the 2015 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'15), 2015 [7] Raspberry Pi, [8] hostapd, [9] Netperf,