RescueMe: Location-Based Secure and Dependable VANETs for Disaster Rescue

Natural disasters and terrorism threaten our nation's safety and security, rendering post-disaster rescue mission critical. It is of paramount importance to carry out rescue work relying on secure and dependable networking. In this paper, we propose RescueMe, location-based vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), to aid in secure and dependable rescue planning for the efficient allocation of rescue resources. RescueMe leverages the location information stored during normal network operations to facilitate post-disaster rescue planning, while guaranteeing that the sensitive user location information is not exploited to trace a user's whereabouts when disasters are absent, even if the most powerful collusion attack is allowed. We provide a novel construction for the location update message, and propose several enhancements, to achieve the functional and security goals of RescueMe.