Treffer: Multi-drone rescue search in a large network.

Natural disasters are recurring emergencies that can result in numerous deaths and injuries. When a natural disaster occurs, rescue teams can be sent to help affected survivors, but deploying them efficiently is a challenge. Rescuers not knowing where affected survivors are located poses a significant challenge in delivering aid. With the development of new technologies, there are new possibilities to reduce this uncertainty, alleviating this challenge. One can first send out automated drones to locate affected survivors and then send rescue teams to their locations. We develop a model for the search process and construct mathematical methods to construct efficient search routes. We utilize a divide and conquer technique to determine the routes that are most likely to yield an efficient search. We combine this with our mathematical methods to construct efficient search routes in real-time and a method to update these routes in real-time as drones gather information. • We model a large-scale multi-drone search for multiple targets in continuous time. • We propose simplifying policies that to quickly find search plans in this model. • We find valuable routes to expedite re-optimization when new information is learned. • We run computational experiments to test the methods in large theoretical instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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