Applications of drone in disaster management: A scoping review

The use of drones has rapidly evolved over the past decade involving a variety of fields ranging from agriculture, commercial and becoming increasingly used in disaster management or humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, the evidence of its use in mass disasters is still unclear and scarce. This article aims to evaluate the current drone feasibility projects and to discuss a number of challenges related to the deployment of drones in mass disasters in the hopes of empowering and inspiring possible future work. This research follows Arksey and O'Malley framework and updated by Joanna Briggs Institute Framework for Scoping Reviews methodology to summarise the results of 52 research papers over the past ten years, from 2009 to 2020, outlining the research trend of drone application in disaster. A literature search was performed in Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, individual journals, grey literature and google search with assessment based on their content and significance. Potential application of drones in disaster are broad. Based on articles identified, drone application in disasters are classified into four categories; (1) mapping or disaster management which has shown the highest contribution, (2) search and rescue, (3) transportation and (4) training. Although there is a significant increase in the number of publications on use of drone in disaster within the last five years, there is however limited discussion to address post-disaster healthcare situation especially with regards to disaster victim identification. It is evident that drone applications need to be further explored; to focus more on drone assistance to humans especially in victim identification. It is envisaged that with sufficient development, the application of drones appears to be promising and will improve their effectiveness especially in disaster management.