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International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (3.7) (2018) 9-12
International Journal of Engineering & Technology
Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET
Research paper
Development of Drone for Search and Rescue Operation in
Malaysia Flood Disaster
Ahmad Sobri Hashim
1*
, Mohamad Syafiq Mohamad Tamizi
2
Department of Computer & Information Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia
*Corresponding author E-mail: sobri.hashim@utp.edu.my
1
; syafiqtamizi@gmail.com
2
Abstract
2014 drew a very terrible history to Malaysia where this country was hit by the worst flood disaster ever since for the last 20 years. This
disaster has caused property lost and few death cases were also reported. Drone, new emergence technology, has the capability to be
deployed for search and rescue operation in flood disaster. This technology could improve the operation of search and rescue, reduce the
cost incurred and fasten the time to respond when flood happens. It is due to its capability in terms of small scale size of equipment as
compared to the conventional search and rescue facilities such as boats, helicopters, etc. Therefore, this paper presents on the develop-
ment of drone prototype for search and rescue operation in Malaysia flood disaster. The architecture of the software and hardware inte-
gration for search and rescue drone has been designed. The experiment was conducted to evaluate on the accuracy of flood victims’ de-
tection.
Keywords: drone; search and rescue; flood disaster
1. Introduction
In Malaysia, flood occurs nearly every year during the monsoon
season and is considered as a regular natural disaster in the coun-
try. Given Malaysia’s geographical location, we face a heavy and
regular rainfall during the local tropical wet season from October
to March each year and flood is a natural result of this cyclical
monsoons [1]. As stated by Chan [2], when flood happens, they
caused millions of Ringgit in damages, the loss of life and proper-
ty along with agricultural and livestock devastation. In the case of
a disaster, there is an impending need for robotic help with request
to lead a powerful search and rescue operation, due to their imme-
diate permissible deployment. Search and rescue drone has over
its human partner is the relative speed at which they can enter a
disaster site and start to gather data. Drone can be deployed into a
disaster site very quickly because they are expendable in relation
to human life [3].
Search and rescue operation to find stranded victims was carried
out by boat and helicopter but this type of procedure consumed a
lot of time and cost because helicopter need to fly from an airport
or base to disaster zone. Moreover, search and rescue boat is diffi-
cult to be used especially to cover large area of disaster zone like
in urban area. According to [4] the cost of deployment of helicop-
ter for search and rescue mission estimates $10,000 to $15,000 per
hour, manned helicopter during disaster usually operate at low
attitude and bad weather, operating in this type of condition in-
crease the risk of fatal crash that might kill the pilot and victims.
This project has two main objectives; to develop a prototype drone
that can be deployed for search and rescue operation in Malaysia’s
flood disaster, to evaluate the proposed drone prototype through
control environment experiment. As proof of concept, the project
is scaled down to only control environment situation because of
cost and time constraint. The proposed prototype, which consist of
quadcopter, transmitter, GPS/GPRS/GSM Module V3.0 camera
and receiver, is tested to find missing object within one kilometer
range. The prototype will be evaluated based on response from
request messages and the accuracy of the location transmitted by
the module.
2. Literature Review
In Malaysian history, one of the worst flood that happened in dec-
ades is the latest enormous flooding created by the monsoonal
downpour. They are the floods that hit the nation from 15 Decem-
ber 2014 till 3 January 2015 and brought about a sum of 210,116
individuals that have been moved in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pa-
hang, Perak and Johor [5]. As reported in [6], at the point when
the flooding happens, the victims need to be rescued from flood
zone to evacuation center. Access to a few territories and evacua-
tion center were cut off and due to the strong current and awful
weather, rescue work force couldn't achieve the victims either by
truck, motorboat, or helicopter. In regions like Kuala Krai and
Gua Musang, adequately everybody in the district had turned into
a victim because of the extent of the flooding there. The govern-
ment had to conduct massive search and rescue operation over a
huge territory to reach trapped victim and to provide relief.
According to news article composed by [4], Hurricane Katrina
saw the first deployment of drones in a catastrophe, setting the
stage for such drone deployments around the world. The hurricane
was a point of interest for drone technologies, significant in their
improvement for emergencies situation. The Centre for Robot-
Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), as part of the Florida
State Emergency Response Team drone to the disaster areas that
had been hit by the hurricane to discover stranded victims.
