Integration of UAVs and FANETs in Disaster Management: A Review on Applications, Challenges and Future Directions

Rapid growth and technological improvement in wireless communication, driven by engineers from various disciplines, have reached significant milestones. Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs) and flying ad hoc networks (FANET) have undergone one of the biggest innovations. UAVs have drawn a lot of attention from research institutions. They are increasingly employed in various application fields, such as real-time monitoring, precision farming, wireless coverage, military surveillance, climate monitoring, disaster surveillance, and monitoring and rescue operations. The primary characteristics of disasters are their unpredictability and the scarcity of resources in the affected areas. To reduce the loss of lives and livelihoods, disaster management has received much attention. Numerous methodologies and technologies have been developed to predict and handle disasters. UAVs are increasingly being used in disaster management. Additionally, artificial intelligence and collaborative machine learning techniques are gaining prominence among researchers, who are investigating the possibility of their use in disaster management tasks to better cope with the severe and frequently devastating effects of natural catastrophes. This paper provides a review of the relevant FANET research activities in disaster management and emerging artificial intelligence techniques, along with several observations and research challenges. The papers are categorized based on the disaster scenario-related problems and their proposed solutions. FANET problems are receiving less attention from the research community, and the main challenges with FANETs are also highlighted. Finally, significant insights are presented that can aid in improving research related to the application of FANETs in disaster management.