Emerging UAV technology for disaster detection, mitigation, response, and preparedness

• Published in: Journal of field robotics Vol. 39; no. 6; pp. 905 - 955
• Main Authors: Khan, Amina, Gupta, Sumeet, Gupta, Sachin Kumar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.09.2022
• Subjects: Cloud computing; Communications systems; Disaster management; disaster management system; Disasters; Earthquakes; Floods; fog computing; Forest & brush fires; Forest fires; Internet of Things; IoT; Landslides; Rescue operations; search and rescue; Tethered balloons; Transportation systems; UAVs; UAV‐communication; UAV‐network technologies; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Wireless communications; Wireless sensor networks; WSN
• ISSN: 1556-4959; 1556-4967
• DOI: 10.1002/rob.22075

In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant interest in research groups due to the wide range of applications, such as disaster surveillance and monitoring, rescue operations, military, civil, and so forth. UAVs are most often used to fulfill both user's services and requirements such as wireless communication facilities to end‐users, as a relay node to extend the coverage of the core network, and so forth. UAVs are versatile in design and can cover larger areas, contrary to the Tethered Balloon and Loon Balloon systems. Generally in any natural or human‐made disaster, there is a high potential risk of damage to buildings, transport systems, communication systems, and basic services. During heavy disasters like landslides, forest fires, floods, earthquakes, and so forth, the conventional terrestrial communication system gets destroyed, and people face many problems. In this case, UAVs prove to offer a better solution to provide fast, cost‐effective, easy to deploy, and secure wireless communication to the victims. But there are some issues like interference between UAVs and other base stations, coordination between UAVs, Quality of Service requirements, Size, Weight, and Power limitation, delay, coverage, positioning of UAVs, and so forth. This study article mainly highlighted these issues and try to present the recent developments of the state‐of‐the‐art to overcome these issues. In UAV communications, with an increasing emphasis on how UAVs can be integrated with different technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Network, Heterogeneous Network, and Cloud computing. The primary aim of this article is to examine how UAVs can assist survivors in floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, or in any natural or human‐made disaster situations, either in the present or soon. Also, it focused on various applications of UAVs in disaster management (DM). It underlines the significance of UAVs in DM and their advantages. It also focuses on the various issues and challenges faced by the UAV‐based infrastructure and security issues and gives future directions.