Real-Time UAV Routing Strategy for Monitoring and Inspection for Postdisaster Restoration of Distribution Networks

Abstract

After a natural disaster, a quick inspection of all damaged components is crucial to recover the functionality of distribution networks. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can perform inspection tasks, particularly for damages that are difficult to access for human repair crews. Additionally, UAVs can monitor the transmission lines to find potential dangers and early-stage damages, and to monitor the road infrastructure to provide real-time information about traffic conditions so that repair crews can select the best ways to reach damages. Besides, due to unpredictable events during restoration, the UAV routing strategy (UAVRS) needs to be updated in real time. Thus, the proposed UAVRS in this article determines the optimal routes for the UAVs allocated to inspect damages as well as the optimal routes for the UAVs to monitor transmission lines and roads in real time for distribution networks. To tackle the multi-time-scale characteristic of the proposed UAVRS, a two-layer decision-making architecture is proposed. A bilevel programming problem is solved in the first layer for the large-time-scale problem, and a mixed-integer linear programming problem is solved for the small-time-scale problem in the second layer. A case study based on the distribution network in Zaltbommel and its neighbor areas, in The Netherlands, illustrates the effectiveness of our real-time method compared to the offline methods. Furthermore, different solvers are studied and compared in view of the real-time requirement.