Designing unmanned aerial vehicle networks for biological material transportation - The case of Brussels

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) may solve, or at least reduce, the negative impacts of road transport such as accidents, pollution and congestion. The objective of this paper is to design UAV networks for biomedical material transportation in line with the Drone4Care project. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal (PESTEL) analysis provides an overview of the macro-environmental factors that should be considered. To identify the internal and external factors that are favourable and unfavourable to achieve this objective, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is also performed. The raised issues are translated into a number of quantifiable scenario elements containing the most plausible up-coming events that may impact the future of UAV networks. Four location models are developed and applied to the city of Brussels and its periphery with respect to the associated market in terms of biomedical product flows (blood units or medical samples that are transported between hospitals, laboratories, and blood transfusion centres). In the context of separate case studies of scenario-based analysis, the experiments show that the use of charging stations is useful to extend the mission ranges and to gain market share. The results also show the possibility of gradually implementing the bases without requiring any major changes such as closing a base.