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In disaster scenarios, such as natural disasters or terrorist strikes, it is very important for rescue teams to get an overview of the current situation. To get that overview as quickly as possible and to coordinate the rescue teams during their mission, it is essential that the teams are able to communicate with each other. However, as the disaster area is unknown and the previous communication infrastructure may be broken, the rescue teams ideally have to bring their own communication equipment to set up an independent infrastructure.

Such an infrastructure may be based on small, fast, and autonomously flying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that are able to fly over affected areas. These devices carry network equipment that creates an ad-hoc communication network infrastructure among all UAVs, dedicated for the rescue teams. Such a basic communication system can be used to coordinate the teams, to search for people that need help by scanning for isolated cell phones, or to offer new kinds of applications that assist the rescue teams during their work. In the second step, this temporary network can be extended by devices that have more capabilities than UAVs, for example cars or trucks that are able to carrying heavy base stations.

Having such a system would be very beneficial for rescue teams that enter large-scale disaster areas. However, as each disaster scenario is different and each deployment poses different challenges, it must be possible to adapt such a communication system to the specific needs of arbitrary disaster scenarios easily.

This workshop will cover aspects of such communication architectures dedicated for disaster scenarios in a whole. It brings together researchers working on different layers of communication systems, as working on such an architecture benefits from knowledge regarding a broad set of aspects.