A Novel Mathematical Model with Fairness Constraints for Uninterrupted Network Coverage in Disasters

Şatır Akpunar Ö., Akpınar Ş.

JOURNAL OF NETWORK AND SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, cilt.33, sa.2, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 33 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10922-025-09914-3
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF NETWORK AND SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, PASCAL, ABI/INFORM, Aerospace Database, Applied Science & Technology Source, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, Computer & Applied Sciences, INSPEC, Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Metadex, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Disaster management, Drone base station, Operations management, Mathematical modeling
  • Manisa Celal Bayar Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Drones can be used as base stations to support search and rescue operations due to damage to telecommunications infrastructure after a disaster. This involves identifying a number of hotspots over the disaster area where the drones should hover for a certain amount of time, and moving the drones between these points along the pre-determined routes. Allocating the drones to appropriate locations and finding optimal routes is an optimization problem, and solving this problem to optimality is crucial to ensure sustainable operations with limited resources. This paper addresses this optimization problem and presents the drone base station allocation and routing problem (DBSARP) under disaster conditions. The problem aims at separately optimizing two objectives: spatial coverage by maximizing the coverage areas and temporal coverage by maximizing the total hover time as well as considering fairness. A mathematical model is proposed to determine the locations and routes of the drone base stations (DBSs) and their lengths of stay at each location. Furthermore, a real-life implementation of the proposed model is realized based on the earthquake that happened in the Bayrakli district of Izmir, Türkiye in 2020. Finally, a set of sensitivity analyses is performed by varying key parameters of the problem, such as battery capacities and number of the DBSs.