UAV Aided Dynamic Routing of Resources in a Flood Scenario

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic routing of resources in a fast-changing flood scenario using land vehicles aided by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The road network of the area is modelled as a graph network with travel time and road capacities and vehicles containing the resources are routed through the roads from the relief centres, or source nodes, to the disaster affected areas, or destination nodes, by considering the goods as a dynamic flow in the road network. The quickest flow algorithm is initially implemented to solve this basic transportation problem. A team of UAVs survey the flooded area to check the safety of the chosen routes and monitor the status of the vehicles over time. Changes in the routing parameters, which can hinder the transportation process, are communicated and the goods are re-routed by considering the current position of the vehicles spread on the road network as individual sources in the problem and then by applying the earliest arrival flows algorithm for a multiple source problem. Simulations are performed on virtual and real street environments considering various scenarios which show the effectiveness of the methodology.