Medi-Fly-DR: A Communication-Enabled UAV Micro-Infrastructure for Disaster-Resilient Healthcare Logistics

Abstract

Disasters disrupt healthcare delivery by damaging transport routes and weakening the communication infrastructure required to coordinate time-critical medical logistics. This paper presents Medi-Fly-DR, a safety-aware, IoT-enabled UAV framework designed as a communication-integrated microinfrastructure for disaster-resilient healthcare logistics. Unlike conventional UAV delivery systems that primarily focus on physical transport, Medi-Fly-DR integrates autonomous medical delivery with real-time telemetry, mission-state visibility, secure data exchange, payload monitoring, dynamic geofencing, and safety-gated mission orchestration within a unified cyberphysical architecture. The framework is validated through controlled field trials using an industry-grade multirotor UAV over 1–2 km routes, supported by route-matched road baselines and fault-injection experiments. Experimental results demonstrate an approximately 80% reduction in delivery time compared with road transport, a 96% mission success rate, and safe recovery under low-battery, communication-loss, and high-wind conditions. Continuous telemetry enables real-time monitoring of mission progress, payload status, and system health, supporting traceable, coordinated, and fault-aware healthcare response. These findings show that Medi-Fly-DR functions not merely as a UAV delivery mechanism, but as an information-centric aerial infrastructure for maintaining healthcare continuity in disaster affected and resource-constrained environments.