Help from the Sky: Leveraging UAVs for Disaster Management

TLDR

The article envisions UAV-assisted disaster management, integrating prediction, assessment, and response functions. It proposes UAVs that survey affected areas, establish wireless links, and deploy tailored network architectures for various disaster types while addressing connectivity, handoff, security, and energy challenges. The paper is included in a special issue on drones.

Abstract

This article presents a vision for future unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)-assisted disaster management, considering the holistic functions of disaster prediction, assessment, and response. Here, UAVs not only survey the affected area but also assist in establishing vital wireless communication links between the survivors and nearest available cellular infrastructure. A perspective of different classes of geophysical, climate-induced, and meteorological disasters based on the extent of interaction between the UAV and terrestrially deployed wireless sensors is presented in this work, with suitable network architectures designed for each of these cases. The authors outline unique research challenges and possible solutions for maintaining connected aerial meshes for handoff between UAVs and for systems-specific, security- and energy-related issues. This article is part of a special issue on drones.