Analysis of Offline-First App Technology in Raspberry Pi Edge Computing for Post-Disaster Hospital Situation

Abstract

The occurrence of disasters has a significant influence on hospitals. The accessibility of the hospital emergency information system may be compromised due to an inconsistent network connection. In order to address this requirement, it is necessary to develop a website system that is capable of functioning in situations where the network connection is limited or unavailable, sometimes referred to as offline functionality. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) is the theory of creating web-based applications that are user friendly, even in situations where the internet connection is limited or there is no internet connection at all by utilizing Service Workers. This offline functionality solution is achieved by combining Service Workers technology with React JavaScript for frontend development and cloud Firestore for backend data storage. This research conducts a comparative analysis between online programs versus programs that utilize Service Workers. Additionally, this device incorporates a Raspberry Pi server to support the edge computing architecture. The findings indicate that web Service Workers exhibit a notably quicker average access time and average browser processing time in comparison to their counterparts. The throughput test indicate that the inclusion of the integrated web Service Workers leads to a higher volume of requests being generated within a certain time period compared to the scenario where the Service Workers is not utilized. The hospital emergency information system has demonstrated its capacity to operate consistently and efficiently by leveraging various technologies.