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This book explores the economic and broader societal rationale for using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or "drone- technologies as a complement to the current transport and logistics systems in several use cases in East Africa. The specific use cases examined include medical goods deliveries, food aid delivery, land mapping and risk assessment, agriculture, and transport and energy infrastructure inspection. Across these applications, the case for using UAVs is examined within the context of logistics objectives-total operating costs, speed, availability, and flexibility-as well as human, or societal, objectives. In the public health use case, as more low- and middle-income countries explore opportunities to improve efficiency and performance in their health supply chains and diagnostics networks, they face myriad choices about how best to use UAVs to improve product availability and public health outcomes and to reach the last mile. The high-level findings from this analysis are that, if examining commodity categories individually and looking exclusively at costs, delivery with UAVs in general is still more expensive for most categories. Although the cost is still higher, the most cost-effective use case examples include the transport of laboratory samples to selected destinations and delivery of life-saving items and blood. However, "layering- several use cases can provide efficiencies and cost savings by allocating fixed costs across a greater number of flights and maximizing capacity and time utilization. From the perspective of public decision-makers, the cost effectiveness of UAVs cannot be analyzed without looking at the public health benefits, which may be substantial. Drone application in the other use cases examined in this book, such as mapping, risk assessment, and agriculture, is relatively more common than cargo drone operations, and the existing pilot initiatives in East Africa have delivered impressive results for speed and quality (precision). Food aid delivery by drones is still mostly at a planning, rather than implementation, stage. Drone applications are rapidly evolving, and several use cases could gain impact and scale over the coming years.

Cost Benefit Analysis --- Disruptive Technology --- Drone --- Food Aid --- Infrastructure --- Logistics --- Supply Chain --- UAS --- UAV --- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle --- Unmanned Aircraft System

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"The journal focuses on design and applications of drones, including unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), etc. Likewise, contributions based on unmanned water/underwater drones and unmanned ground vehicles are also welcomed"--website, viewed September 9, 2019.

unmanned aerial vehicle --- controlling system --- machine learning --- unmanned aircraft systems --- remotely piloted aircraft systems --- Drone aircraft --- Vehicles, Remotely piloted --- Unmanned vehicles --- Vehicles --- Radio control --- Remote control --- Drones (Aircraft) --- Pilotless aircraft --- Remotely piloted aircraft --- UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles) --- Unmanned aerial vehicles --- Flying-machines --- Airplanes --- Transport engineering --- Drone aircraft. --- Vehicles, Remotely piloted.

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The concept of remote sensing as a way of capturing information from an object without making contact with it has, until recently, been exclusively focused on the use of Earth observation satellites.The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) controlled navigation and sensor-carrying capabilities has increased the number of publications related to new remote sensing from much closer distances. Previous knowledge about the behavior of the Earth's surface under the incidence different wavelengths of energy has been successfully applied to a large amount of data recorded from UAVs, thereby increasing the special and temporal resolution of the products obtained.More specifically, the ability of UAVs to be positioned in the air at pre-programmed coordinate points; to track flight paths; and in any case, to record the coordinates of the sensor position at the time of the shot and at the pitch, yaw, and roll angles have opened an interesting field of applications for low-altitude aerial photogrammetry, known as UAV photogrammetry. In addition, photogrammetric data processing has been improved thanks to the combination of new algorithms, e.g., structure from motion (SfM), which solves the collinearity equations without the need for any control point, producing a cloud of points referenced to an arbitrary coordinate system and a full camera calibration, and the multi-view stereopsis (MVS) algorithm, which applies an expanding procedure of sparse set of matched keypoints in order to obtain a dense point cloud. The set of technical advances described above allows for geometric modeling of terrain surfaces with high accuracy, minimizing the need for topographic campaigns for georeferencing of such products.This Special Issue aims to compile some applications realized thanks to the synergies established between new remote sensing from close distances and UAV photogrammetry.

Technology: general issues --- unmanned aerial vehicle --- urban LULC --- GEOBIA --- multiscale classification --- unmanned aircraft system (UAS) --- deep learning --- super-resolution (SR) --- convolutional neural network (CNN) --- generative adversarial network (GAN) --- structure-from-motion --- photogrammetry --- remote sensing --- UAV --- 3D-model --- surveying --- vertical wall --- snow --- remotely piloted aircraft systems --- structure from motion --- lidar --- forests --- orthophotography --- construction planning --- sustainable construction --- urbanism --- BIM --- building maintenance --- unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) --- structure-from-motion (SfM) --- ground control points (GCP) --- accuracy assessment --- point clouds --- corridor mapping --- UAV photogrammetry --- terrain modeling --- vegetation removal --- unmanned aerial vehicles --- power lines --- image-based reconstruction --- 3D reconstruction --- unmanned aerial systems --- time series --- accuracy --- reproducibility --- orthomosaic --- validation --- drone --- GNSS RTK --- precision --- elevation --- multispectral imaging --- vegetation indices --- nutritional analysis --- correlation --- optimal harvest time --- UAV images --- monoscopic mapping --- stereoscopic plotting --- image overlap --- optimal image selection --- n/a

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UAVs are becoming a reality and attract increasing attention. They can be remotely controlled or completely autonomous and be used alone or as a fleet and in a large set of applications. They are constrained by hardware since they cannot be too heavy and rely on batteries. Their use still raises a large set of exciting new challenges in terms of trajectory optimization and positioning when they are used alone or in cooperation, and communication when they evolve in swarm, to name but a few examples. This book presents some new original contributions regarding UAV or UAV swarm optimization and communication aspects.

direction-of-arrival estimation --- unmanned aerial vehicles --- UAV swarm --- aperiodic arrays --- MUSIC --- Cramer–Rao bound --- stochastic system --- configuration control --- multiplicative noises --- dynamic model --- stochastic robustness analysis and design --- wireless sensor networks --- unmanned aerial vehicle --- mission completion time --- trajectory planning --- UAV secure communication --- secrecy rate maximization --- jamming --- trajectory design --- power control --- sensors --- data collection utility --- GPS measurement --- UAV --- 3D models --- measurement precision --- unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) --- cooperative communication --- topology structure --- complex field network coding (CFNC) --- edge computing --- internet of things --- mobile robots --- resource allocation --- control co-design --- data offloading --- UAV-enabled computing --- resource-based pricing --- risk-awareness --- multi-access edge computing systems --- UAV fleet --- energy consumption --- self-organization --- algorithms --- optimization --- UAV replacement --- multiple unmanned aerial vehicles --- mobile nodes --- data collection --- collision-free --- synchronized multi-agent formation --- decentralized sliding mode control --- drones --- wireless --- swarm --- communication

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UAVs are becoming a reality and attract increasing attention. They can be remotely controlled or completely autonomous and be used alone or as a fleet and in a large set of applications. They are constrained by hardware since they cannot be too heavy and rely on batteries. Their use still raises a large set of exciting new challenges in terms of trajectory optimization and positioning when they are used alone or in cooperation, and communication when they evolve in swarm, to name but a few examples. This book presents some new original contributions regarding UAV or UAV swarm optimization and communication aspects.

Information technology industries --- direction-of-arrival estimation --- unmanned aerial vehicles --- UAV swarm --- aperiodic arrays --- MUSIC --- Cramer–Rao bound --- stochastic system --- configuration control --- multiplicative noises --- dynamic model --- stochastic robustness analysis and design --- wireless sensor networks --- unmanned aerial vehicle --- mission completion time --- trajectory planning --- UAV secure communication --- secrecy rate maximization --- jamming --- trajectory design --- power control --- sensors --- data collection utility --- GPS measurement --- UAV --- 3D models --- measurement precision --- unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) --- cooperative communication --- topology structure --- complex field network coding (CFNC) --- edge computing --- internet of things --- mobile robots --- resource allocation --- control co-design --- data offloading --- UAV-enabled computing --- resource-based pricing --- risk-awareness --- multi-access edge computing systems --- UAV fleet --- energy consumption --- self-organization --- algorithms --- optimization --- UAV replacement --- multiple unmanned aerial vehicles --- mobile nodes --- data collection --- collision-free --- synchronized multi-agent formation --- decentralized sliding mode control --- drones --- wireless --- swarm --- communication