Information plays a key role to correctly handle consequences resulting from natural disasters. Discharging rescue teams from gathering that information, and automatically guiding rescue teams to most urgent sub-situations is an open issue in which mini-drones can be useful. Yet, the control of such vehicles is not straight forward to users and can be time consuming. Thus, our contribution is to bring autonomy to drones: to fly autonomously, e.g., scanning and covering a given area, and to realize some tasks (e.g., identifying groups of disabled persons). Last but not least, autonomous drones shall be able to perform both outdoor and indoor missions. IntroductionWhen a natural disaster occurs in a populated zone, a fast and effective organization of the disaster management is necessary to assist the population, to reduce the number of victims and to limit the economic impact [2], [3], [4]. At all phases, one of the first actions to be taken is to set up a disaster cell for coordination. A non-optimal organization causes supplementary losses and delays to come back to, or even prevent, normal situation. (http://www.un-spider.org/).During such an event, maintaining a communication link between victims on one hand and the various actors of the response on the other hand is crucial. This link remains essential even in non-catastrophic circumstances, for instance, a major black-out in a network (electricity, water, etc.). Emergency management starts both with search and rescue, and then with the stabilisation of the overall disaster situation. At any time, the rescue teams need immediate and relevant information concerning the situations they have to face: disaster evolution, surviving persons, critical zones, access to refugee camps, spread assistance tools, etc. Required information is provided by a comprehensive data handling system, called the Geographical Information System (GIS) fed by files generally produced by organizations and space agencies involved in the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters".The detection and the monitoring of the impact of natural disasters are mainly done by space borne and air borne remote sensing surveys through radio and optical instruments. Due to limitations in the time window observation attached to optical instruments (i.e. no observation at night or in presence of cloud cover), radio observations (available ~ 24/7 and relatively insensitive to atmospheric conditions) are particularly useful during the "Response phase" of the disaster management cycle where information must be delivered to the disaster cell in the shortest time possible [5], [6], [7]. As explained in [3], new approaches and the use of new technologies are required for more efficient risk management [3], before, during and after a potential crisis. Every specific action at each step of the crisis must be taken into account and dedicated tools are necessary. New methodologies are needed to conceive systems that mix the use of telecommunication tools, remote sensing for instance [8], and space/temporal-o...
ABSTRACT:Information plays a key role in crisis management and relief efforts for natural disaster scenarios. Given their flight properties, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) provide new and interesting perspectives on the data gathering for disaster management. A new generation of UAVs may help to improve situational awareness and information assessment. Among the advantages UAVs may bring to the disaster management field, we can highlight the gain in terms of time and human resources, as they can free rescue teams from time-consuming data collection tasks and assist research operations with more insightful and precise guidance thanks to advanced sensing capabilities. However, in order to be useful, UAVs need to overcome two main challenges. The first one is to achieve a sufficient autonomy level, both in terms of navigation and interpretation of the data sensed. The second major challenge relates to the reliability of the UAV, with respect to accidental (safety) or malicious (security) risks. This paper first discusses the potential of UAV in assisting in different humanitarian relief scenarios, as well as possible issues in such situations. Based on recent experiments, we discuss the inherent advantages of autonomous flight operations, both lone flights and formation flights. The question of autonomy is then addressed and a secure embedded architecture and its specific hardware capabilities is sketched out. We finally present a typical use case based on the new detection and observation abilities that UAVs can bring to rescue teams. Although this approach still has limits that have to be addressed, technically speaking as well as operationally speaking, it seems to be a very promising one to enhance disaster management efforts activities.
Radio communication and observation services are critical at all levels of disaster management. Among the programmes to be introduced to reduce the impact of natural and human induced disasters, potential transfers from basic research in radio science to research in disaster management are examined. Two specific aspects are studied: (i) the transfer of image processing techniques, developed in other contexts, to risk management; and (ii) the use of knowledge gathered on the effects of variations in the space environment on trans-ionospheric propagation, to gauge the interest of integrating those effects into the exploitation of communications and observation systems. Four families of image processing techniques are shown to be particularly useful to the disaster manager: zoning, counting of objects, roads and network detection, and damage assessment resulting from a series of different radiometric and geometric methods. A brief review of the effects of ionospheric variations on radio propagation up to a few GHz shows both the potential impacts of those variations on communication systems and the importance of introducing ionospheric corrections into several observation services.
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