Decentralized communications for emergency services: A review

Currently the world is going thru turbulent times. The UN World Food Program outlined in 2022 major conflicts in the world still exist in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, in addition to the global pandemic of COVID 19. With social events dramatically affecting the lives of everyday citizens, virtual communications play a more significant role in replacing traditional face-to-face meetings. The use of virtual communications has solved part of the problem bringing millions of companies, governments, and individuals closer together around the world. However, concerns have arisen around the security and privacy of current centralized communication systems, as conflicts have continued to grow so too has the use of communications in emergency situations. The aim of this paper is to better understand how emergency service providers could use a secure decentralized environment with encrypted communications, thru the review of 12 recently published Q1 and A2 articles in the areas of blockchain, decentralized systems, with different communication mediums. This review investigates the methods that organizations use when undertaking activities to improve communication system performance, by describing how different systems can be adopted and utilized. Finally, this review details the different types of blockchain systems, the pros, and cons of different models along with the capabilities and performance of different platforms. We review the core system components of blockchain systems, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses that these different decentralized systems have, along with how to deal with scalability issues to achieve more reliable and secure communication.