The KIOS Research Centre for Intelligence Systems and Networks at the University of Cyprus (UCy) has won an award for cutting edge smartphone technology that can help to save lives in emergency situations even if they have no Wi-Fi access.
According to UCy, the smart phone application developed by researchers at the KIOS centre has been tagged as a communications technology “that changes the world”.

The technology ProximAid ranked among the top nine projects from a total of 50 submitted in the international competition IEEE ComSoc Student Competition “Communications Technology Changing the World”.

“Proximaid can serve as a vital communication tool in areas where communications infrastructure is affected by natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, or man-made disasters such as wars and fires,” UCy said.

Konstandinos Koumidis, a researcher at KIOS and a post-graduate student of the Electronic and Computer Engineering Department at UCy, has received an honorary mention in the 2015 IEEE ComSoc Student Competition for his work on ProximAid.

ProximAid is an innovative smart phone application capable of operating without a connection to a network infrastructure. It enables communication between a network of mobile phones without them being dependent on existing telecommunication provider networks. The app is currently implemented on Android devices that support Wi-Fi Direct functionality to enable multimedia exchange (i.e., text, pictures, and video) directly between devices.

In this way survivors can communicate with the right partners for help. Users of the phones can send messages or photos to call for help or any other information they need to convey. Specifically an ad-hoc network is created in which intelligent algorithms try to save the battery of the devices by the selective forwarding of messages to some of those devices.

“The system can also be a useful tool for first response services such as the police departments, civil defence and fire services, who can operate the system to organise and coordinate their responses quickly and effectively,” UCy said.
The app was developed by Koumides under the supervision of research associate Dr Panayiotis Kolios and Associate Professor Christos Panayiotou.

The team has also been awarded the best paper award at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster Management (ICT-DM 2015) and the first place at the Cyprus Digital Championship 2015 contest. (CNA)