Brief communication: Vehicle routing problem and UAV application in the post-earthquake scenario

Abstract

In this paper we simulate unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) recognition after a possible case of diffuse damage after a seismic event in the town of Acireale (Sicily, Italy). Given a set of sites (84 relevant buildings) and the range of the UAV, we are able to find a number of vehicles to employ and the shortest survey path. The problem of finding the shortest survey path is an operational research problem called the vehicle routing problem (VRP). which has a solution that is known to be computationally time-consuming. We used the simulated annealing (SA) heuristic, which is able to provide stable solutions in a relatively short computing time. We also examined the distribution of the cost of the solutions varying the depot on a regular grid in order to find the best area for executing the survey.