SPARE: Self-adaptive platform for allocating resources in emergencies for urgent edge computing

This paper presents SPARE, a novel serverless platform that supports self-adaptive resource allocation and reconfiguration, thereby increasing the availability of computing resources for time-critical tasks in urgent events. In emergency scenarios, SPARE reallocates resources by forwarding serverless function invocations to the nearest edge nodes having sufficient capacity. Additionally, the platform employs the use of unikernels and lightweight virtualization through Firecracker, which helps to reduce cold start times and improve function responsiveness. The experimental results demonstrate that SPARE is capable of releasing up to one-third of edge nodes within a serverless edge platform, while only experiencing a mild increase in latency, thus maintaining service continuity.