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Locating unmanned aircraft systems for multiple missions under different weather conditions

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Abstract

Motivated by the increasing civilian use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), this paper considers the simultaneous location and routing of UAVs for multiple missions and different weather conditions. We include modeling and computational experience inspired by requirements for air surveillance by the Turkish government’s public agencies. We model these demands in multiple mission areas and consider the impact of different weather conditions on the ability to employ UAVs from different geographic locations. We formulate the problem as a two-stage stochastic integer linear program with recourse and get an optimal solution for realistic test instances in a reasonable amount of time using decomposition by weather and mission combinations. We also introduce an optimization-based heuristic with bounds based on our decomposition for larger test instances.

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Acknowledgements

The first author wishes to thank Naval Postgraduate School’s staff for their hospitality during his visit. A visit that was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) [Grant Number 2219]. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to the referees for their valuable suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Turkish Land Forces, Ankara, 06100, Turkey

    Danışment Vural

  2. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 93943, USA

    Robert F. Dell

  3. Nuh Naci Yagan University, Kayseri, 38170, Turkey

    Erkan Kose

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  1. Danışment Vural
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  2. Robert F. Dell
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  3. Erkan Kose
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Correspondence to Danışment Vural.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 11 and 12.

Table 11 Distances between demand regions and airbases (km)
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Table 12 Distances between demand regions (km)
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Vural, D., Dell, R.F. & Kose, E. Locating unmanned aircraft systems for multiple missions under different weather conditions. Oper Res Int J 21, 725–744 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-019-00455-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-019-00455-7

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