Drones and Blockchain Integration to Manage Forest Fires in Remote Regions

Abstract

Central management of fire stations and traditional optimization strategies are vulnerable to response time, a single point of failure, workload balancing, and cost problems. This is further intensified by the absence of modern communication systems and a comprehensive management framework for firefighting operations. These problems motivate the use of new technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the capability to transport extinguishing materials and reach remote zones. Forest fire management in remote regions can also benefit from blockchain technology (BC) due to the facilitation of decentralization, tamper-proofing, immutability, and mission recording in distributed ledgers. This study proposed an integrated drone-based blockchain framework in which the network users or nodes include drones, drone controllers, firefighters, and managers. In this distributed network, all nodes can have access to data; therefore, the flow of data exchange is smooth and challenges on spatial distance are minimized. The research concluded with a discussion on constraints and opportunities in integrating blockchain with other new technologies to manage forest fires in remote regions.