Humanitarian Drone Operation for Disaster Relief Supply Distribution and Information Collection

Abstract

In order to minimize the damage caused by large-scale disasters, efficient operation immediately following the incident is very important. However, normal logistics networks may not be available due to traffic congestion or road damage. In recent years, the use of drones for disaster relief has attracted attention. Drones have many characteristics that are beneficial for this purpose, such as autonomous control and being able to take off and land in small spaces. Research on commercial drone logistics is being actively conducted, but few studies have focused on their application to disaster relief. In this study, we propose a model to make effective use of drones during disasters. In our model, drones have two roles, namely, transporting relief supplies and collecting information, and can perform these two tasks simultaneously in one flight. Since drones have a shorter range than other transportation methods, drones generally need to make stops at charging stations. This complicates the proposed mathematical model, and it becomes difficult to obtain an optimal solution when the problem scale is large; accordingly, we construct an algorithm that assumes practical use. The proposed algorithm solves the mathematical model by dividing it into subproblems, allowing for a practical solution to be obtained in a reasonable time. Numerical experiments verify the validity of the model under various conditions. In addition, we formulate the facility location problem of depots and charging stations as a p-median and p-center problem, and verify the significance of its optimization.