Complementarity, Interoperability, and Level of Integration of Humanitarian Drones with Emerging Digital Technologies: A State-of-the-Art Systematic Literature Review of Mathematical Models

Abstract

The adoption of drones and other emerging digital technologies (DTs) has proven essential in revolutionizing humanitarian logistics as standalone solutions. However, the interoperability of humanitarian drones with other DTs has not yet been explored. In this study, we performed a systematic literature review to attempt to fill this gap by evaluating 101 mathematical models collected from Scopus. After conducting a descriptive analysis to identify the trends of publications in terms of year, type, source, and country of origin, a content analysis ensued to investigate the complementarity, interoperability, and level of integration of humanitarian drones with eight DTs. Next, we researched how these DTs can help drones exploit their capabilities to their full potential and facilitate the various drone operations deployed across different disaster scenarios, types, and stages. Last, the solving approaches employed by the models were examined. Overall, we shifted our research focus toward several overlooked aspects in the literature and identified multiple challenges needing to be addressed. Our work resulted in the formulation of a holistic framework aiming to standardize the cooperative utilization of DTs during the execution of humanitarian drone operations, so as to enhance their real-life application and scalability.