UAV-assisted disaster management: Applications and open issues

The fast-paced development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and their use in different domains, opens a new paradigm on their use in natural disaster management. In UAV-assisted disaster management applications, UAVs not only survey the affected area but also assist in establishing the communication network between the disaster survivors, rescue teams and nearest available cellular infrastructure. This paper identifies main disaster management applications of UAV networks and discusses open research issues related to UAV-assisted disaster management.