Disaster Management & Hazard Assessment System

Disaster, as defined by the United Nations, is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society, which involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts that exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. Disaster managem

Project Title

Disaster Management & Hazard Assessment System

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

Disaster, as defined by the United Nations, is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society, which involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts that exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. Disaster management is how we deal with the human, material, economic or environmental impacts of said disaster, it is the process of how we “prepare for, respond to and learn from the effects of major failures”. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins. According to the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies a disaster occurs when a hazard impacts on vulnerable people. The combination of hazards, vulnerability and inability to reduce the potential negative consequences of risk results in disaster.

Natural disasters have marked human existence throughout history and have always caused peaks in mortality and morbidity. This project aims to recognize and assessment the hazards in order to in form the authorities/people so lives, homes and infrastructures can be saved or put on alert to avoid potential hazards to become disasters and ruin things and life of the people.

In this project UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicle, Drones) with the help of image processing and artificial intelligence helps to gather information and assessment the hazards, manage the disasters even where humankind cannot enter or it is highly dangerous to stay in those areas through UAVs, thus necessary instructions and information is sent to take necessary actions.

With wireless communication and wireless charging functionality built for UAVs it is no longer necessary to manually charge them or communicate them. With stations created even at range of 5KM it can be communicated and data transferred. Useful for monitoring floods, forest fires or nuclear material leakage.

With the system of communication backed by blockchain there would be no compensation for security and almost no doors left open for vulnerabilities. It can be assured as well that UAVs would not land or get controlled by any other person/organization or their data accessed.

Project Objectives

Besides the military and commercial applications of drones, there is no doubt in their efficiency in case of supporting emergency management. This Project focuses mainly on operational and tactical drone application in disaster management using a time-scaled separation of the application, like pre-disaster activity, activity immediately after the occurrence of a disaster and the activity after the primary disaster elimination. Project faces to 5 disasters, like Tsunami, dangerous material releases, floods, earthquakes and forest fires. Author gathered international examples and used own experiences in this field. Results and discussion: An earthquake is a rapid escalating disaster, where, many times, there is no other way for a rapid damage assessment than aerial reconnaissance. For special rescue teams, the drone application can help much in a rapid location selection, where enough place remained to survive for victims. Floods are typical for a slow onset disaster. In contrast, managing floods is a very complex and difficult task. It requires continuous monitoring of dykes, flooded and threatened areas. Drone can help managers largely keeping an area under observation. Forest fires are disasters, where the tactical application of drone is already well developed. Drone can be used for fire detection, intervention monitoring and also for post-fire monitoring. In case of nuclear accident or hazardous material leakage drone is also a very effective or can be the only one tool for supporting disaster management.

Project Implementation Method

An algorithm for Image Processing & Computer Vision will be created to identify and recognize different types of disaster and data will be fed to algorithm each time to maintain better accuracy and response. For the first phase a Human Controlled Drone will be designed that is controlled remotely in this phase only speed and working condition of drone with different environments will be tested and the PID controller will be tuned.  After achieving successful result and processing stream captured through manual drone the next phase starts which is  a Hard-Coded Autonomous Drone that flies on a specified/trained area and path. The drone in this phase would transfer and stream without any instruction given. The third phase is AI Autonomous Drone that can decide where and which part of the areas to capture and stream and while it lacks sufficient battery level calls for help /replacement other drone or can proceed to nearest station for charging. After getting desired results from all three phase for each drone will act as Wireless Charging Dock for other drone and also same will be applied for the solar  powered station backed by a battery. Furthermore, the next improvement will be Drones Communication while a drone is far that can not connect to station wireless radio and transfers data to next drone and the drone acts as pipeline. For the security and privacy of data the communication network will be backed by a Blockchain based communication

For fully completed Integration a OmniTIK will act as tower and three other SXT 5 will be stations and for each station a wireless router will be installed so RaspberryPi powered drones can communicate with/between them or send/stream video/data. Each station and tower solar and battery backed up with wireless charging dock.

Benefits of the Project

• Alert and Monitoring disasters 
• Minimize recovery time & possible delays
• Prevent potential legal liability
• Improve security
• Avoid potentially damaging last-second decision-making during a disaster

• Assessing Structural Damage

• Provide data in near-real time to inform decisions on the ground
• Provide data to support situational awareness
• Operate in dangerous areas so that first responders don't need to be put in harm's way
• Cover large swathes of area, including remote and hard to access areas, allowing for more efficient use of public safety personnel and resources
• Provide technical capabilities that humans cannot, such as thermal or infrared scanning

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

1) AI powered drones that are able to fly autonomously and cover a certain area. Transfer data to other drones as well as main tower. Each drone capable of finding nearest wireless station and charging itself through docking. 

2) Image processing algorithm that process the data/picture or videos received from drones and determine the mapped condition as whether it remains under the stable environment, pre-disaster or alert or disaster happened situation. 

3) A decision-making AI program that processes different data from various resources i.e drones, weather, internet, satellite information available on the internet or weather forecast websites and provides instructions and details or forecasts about upcoming hazards or disasters or challenges. 

4) Stations capable of charging the drones wirelessly or act as Access Point for wireless data transmission. 

5) Blockchain backed communication system/server that securely approves data and instruction and maintains connectivity of drones to each other.

6) Main tower with features of covering all stations through 5 GHz wireless at range of 5KM. 

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Others

Other Industries

Telecommunication

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Robotics

Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Cities and Communities, Climate Action

Required Resources

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