Synchronized truck and drone routing under disastrous conditions (case study: Urban thoroughfares disinfection)

Spraying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely utilized in the agricultural sector for various field operations including irrigation as well as fertilizing and pesticides applications. In this paper, we explore the application of spraying UAVs to neutralize environmental contamination or infections in crises such as outbreak of epidemics. Given the limitations of current UAV technologies and their operational constraints in urban areas, such crisis management operations are carried out in collaboration with ground vehicles. Consequently, a novel mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to facilitate the collaboration of ground vehicles with UAVs. A hybrid heuristic algorithm consisting of simulated annealing and tabu search is also developed to solve the large-size instances efficiently. Finally, the applicability of the model and its solution approach are validated using real-world data.