Determining Reliable Routes Effectively using Drones after a Disaster

Finding a usable route between certain points in post-disaster operations is extremely important for purposes such as evacuation, search, rescue, and aid transportation. In order to find a usable route, drones can be used for scanning purposes to determine whether the components of this route, such as bridges, viaducts or road sections, are intact. It has been discussed in the literature that drones are also used for different purposes such as long-term damage assessment in post-disaster operations. Within the framework of this project, algorithms will be developed that produce strategies to find out, in the shortest expected time,whether there is a connection between two points on a network whose some nodes have become unusable. It will be assumed that the probability of the nodes becoming unusable depending on the degree of the disaster, the drone’s scanning times for the nodes, and the time it takes for the drone to reach from one point to another are known. The strategy found under these conditions will indicate which node the drone will scan next as a function of previous scan results. This strategy can be expressed as a decision treeand an expected cost is calculated for each strategy using the relevant probabilities and times. The goal is to find the strategy with the least expected cost. The range of the drone and the locations and charging times of the charging stations should also be considered as part of the problem for certain special cases.