## 6 Application Example
### Analysis of the System Design
Considering this general structure for the interaction space, we have defined three specific scenarios in which we have changed the path of the mules just to illustrate the impact that it has on the information availability and flow. The first specific scenario considers two mules connecting only team leaders and incident commanders (Figure 8). In the second one, a mule keeps the former path (Fireman 1 in Figure 9) and the other extends that route to allow the information flow with paramedics and police officers (Fireman 2). In the third specific scenario, both mules follow the route used by the Fireman 2 in the previous scenario (Figure 10). Moreover, in these simulations we have changed the communication range of the network links in order to illustrate how the technology used to implement these links impacts on the information flow and availability. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Parameter** & **Value** \\ \hline Simulation time & 3600 s \\ Simulation areas & \(200\times 200\) m \\ Number of nodes & 43 \\ MAC protocol & IEEE 802.11 \\ Propagation model & TwoRayGround \\ Transmission range & 30 m \\ Routing protocol & UM-OLSR \\ Frequency of msg delivery & 1 s \\ Msg weight & 2 Kbytes \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Simulation parameters. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Parameter** & **Value** \\ \hline _IC_, _Paramedics and Police Officers:_ \\ \hline Mobility model & Stationary \\ Max. speed & 0.1 mps \\ Max. pause & 60 s \\ \hline \hline _Team Leaders (firemen):_ \\ \hline Mobility model & RPGM \\ Avg. nodes per group & 4 \\ Max. speed & 2 mps \\ Max. pause & 360 s \\ \hline \hline _Mules (firemen):_ \\ \hline Mobility model & Predefined Path \\ Max. speed & 4 mps \\ Max. pause & 180 s \\ Number of stops & 3 \\ Circuit length & 350 m \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Parameters of the mobility models for each node type. Figure 9: Interaction scenario 2. Provided that the Incident Commander (IC) is the main decision maker of the emergency response process, let us analyze how much information he has available to make decisions. Moreover, we have also analyzed the amount of information that the response process makes available for the LIR, considering that such a component is the only link that the system has for sharing information with other islands (_i.e._, other response efforts being conducted in parallel way). In order to ease the visualization of results, we are not considering the legacy information available in the LIR previous to the emergency situation. Figure 11 shows the percentage of information that is visible for the IC and the LIR, considering the three mobility scenarios and the three communication ranges. The results shown in Figure 11a indicate that, in these scenarios, the information availability increases with the number of interconnected nodes. Therefore, the use of rules plays an important role, due to the instability of the communication links available to support the response process. The tendency is similar in the three scenarios, regardless of the communication range of the nodes. However increasing the communication range increases also the information availability (Figure 11a-c), which is something that we can expect since a large communication range provides more opportunities for information exchange among the nodes. The variability of the information availability (see maximum and minimum values in Figure 11) decreases while increases the probability of interactions among nodes. During the system design phase, the developers can use these results to support their implementation decisions. For instance, if the technology that they have available for implementing the links has short communication range, they can add mules into the system design (even with different paths) until reaching the level of information availability that they need. The number of mules that are required and also their paths can be determined using simulations like the one described above.