key: cord-0868718-7r65qmbn authors: Adwibowo, A. title: Assessments of heavy lift UAV quadcopter drone to support COVID 19 vaccine cold chain delivery for indigenous people in remote areasin South East Asia date: 2021-01-12 journal: nan DOI: 10.1101/2021.01.09.21249494 sha: 7bb745c68e917795e9efdc0e815c63e356ccf88d doc_id: 868718 cord_uid: 7r65qmbn Vaccine delivery is one important aspect need to be strengthened within health systems. One of the main challenges in COVID 19 vaccine delivery is how to cover indigenous population in remote and isolated forests in South East Asia. Another issue in COVID 19 cold chain delivery is requirement for a carrier that can maintain the suitable storage temperature. Related to this condition, COVID 19 vaccine should be delivered using heavy vaccine cooler box and this demand delivery system equipped with heavy lift capacity. In here, this study proposes and assess the potential used of heavy lift UAV quadcopter to expand the COVID 19 vaccine delivery to indigenous people living in village that impeded by rugged terrain. The landscape and terrain analysis show that access to the villages was dominated by 15%-45% slopes and the available access is only 1.5 m width trail. To transport 500 vials with 10 kg carrier along 2 km trail, it requires 2 persons to walk for 1 hour. By using drone, a straight line route with a length of 1.5 km can be developed. There were at least 3 drone types were available commercially to lift 10 kg load and several drones with payload capacity below 10 kg. For carrying 100 vials to village using drones, it is estimated the required delivery time was 1.23-1.38 minutes. Around 1.57-1.66 minute delivery times were required to transport 250 vials. For carrying the maximum and full loads of 500 vials or equals to 10 kg load, a drone requires in average of 3.13 minute delivery times. This required drone delivery time is significantly below the required time by walking that almost 1 hour. Drones were limited by flight operational times. Whereas all required delivery times for each drone assessed in this study were still below the drone operational time. The lowest drone operational time was 16 minutes and this is still higher than the time required for a drone to deliver the vaccine. Considering the effectiveness and anticipating vaccine vaccination, UAV quadcopter drone is a feasible option to support COVID 19 vaccine delivery to reach indigenous people in isolated areas Related to this condition, COVID 19 vaccine should be delivered using heavy vaccine cooler box and this demand delivery system equipped with heavy lift capacity. In here, this study proposes and assess the potential used of heavy lift UAV quadcopter to expand the COVID 19 vaccine delivery to indigenous people living in village that impeded by rugged terrain. The landscape and terrain analysis show that access to the villages was dominated by 15%-45% slopes and the available access is only 1.5 m width trail. To transport 500 vials with 10 kg carrier along 2 km trail, it requires 2 persons to walk for 1 hour. By using drone, a straight line route with a length of 1.5 km can be developed. There were at least 3 drone types were available commercially to lift 10 kg load and several drones with payload capacity below 10 kg. For carrying 100 vials to village using drones, it is estimated the required delivery time was 1.23-1.38 minutes. Around 1.57-1.66 minute delivery times were required to transport 250 vials. For carrying the maximum and full loads of 500 vials or equals to 10 kg load, a drone requires in average of 3.13 minute delivery times. This required drone delivery time is significantly below the required time by walking that almost 1 hour. Drones were limited by flight operational times. Whereas all required delivery times for each drone assessed in this study were still below the drone operational time. The lowest drone operational time was 16 minutes and this is still higher than the time required for a drone to deliver the vaccine. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101 https://doi.org/10. /2021 to the distribution mechanism known as cold chain delivery. COVID 19 vaccine requires specific endless low temperature storages. Any COVID 19 vaccine will need to be handled within specified temperature ranges that are likely to follow those for the influenza vaccine, which must be kept between 2°C and 8°C, while both in transport and storage facilities (Wang et al. 2020 vaccine cold delivery is required immediately. In here, this paper is aimed to assess the . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.09.21249494 doi: medRxiv preprint feasibilities of various drone specification for supporting COVID 19 vaccine cold deliveries. Methods used in this study include the assessment of landscape and analysis on drone specifications. The landscape data were collected from remote sensing analysis and drone specifications from drone manufacturer database. The study area is Baduy village, Banten Landscape assessment is required since delivery using land transport is assessed. The assessment includes the available and dimension of trails (length and width), obstruction include the presence of landslide and flash flood, and slopes denoted in percentage. Steep trail indicated by high slope % will affect and slow the delivery. Land transport assessed in this study includes the time required to travel to the village from the main road. The assessments include the time required to travel either by walking or using vehicles. Vaccine carrier is the load for drone. The cold carrier box was able to maintain vaccine at low temperature for 3 days. The dimension of carrier is 43 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm. The total weight of the carrier was 10 kg and held 500 x 0.5 ml vials. The studied drones were the drone that has ability to carry heavy load >10 kg following the vaccine carrier weight. Several available commercial drones were sampled. The basic assessed drone parameters include speed (km/h) and maximum operation times (minute). The Baduy village was located 2 km from the main road that can still accessed by the vehicles. The only trail available to access the village is a 1.5 m width track. The Baduy village was located inside the valley ( Figure 2 ) and surrounded by high hills with slope ranged from 15-45% and it is quite steep in some locations. The village height was 220 above the sea levels (asl) and the highest hill was 342 m asl. The trails passed rivers and hills. During rainy . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.09.21249494 doi: medRxiv preprint season, the rivers have risks to cause flash flood and landslide risk due to the presence of the hills. In rainy season, the tracks can be very slippery. The land transport assessment shows that . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.09.21249494 doi: medRxiv preprint Various drone types have specific load and flight operational time. Figure 4 shows the negative correlations between loads and flight times. It indicates that flight time was limited by the load. From the drone assessed, there were several drones that have payload below 10 kg and others were above 10 kg. The drone types that able to carry load larger than 10 kg were suitable to transport the full vaccine delivery containing 500 vials for one way delivery. Table 1 (2020) and Leithäuser et al. (2020) . In their study Leithäuser et al. (2020) . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. In this study, the drone delivery was only tested to transport to single point of delivery. Whereas it is possible that the drone will cater the multi point delivery. Berman (2017) accurately. The next option is by using the . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted January 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.09.21249494 doi: medRxiv preprint gimbal technology commonly used for camera mounts. Regarding the cost required for drone assisted vaccine delivery, Haidari et al. (2016) have provided a comprehensive calculations It is confirmed that implementing the drone in the baseline scenario can improve vaccine availability and even can reduce logistics cost equals to $0.08 per dose vaccine administered with ranges of $0.05-$0.21 per vaccine dose administered. Currently, there is an increasing interest in using of drone to deliver medicines to areas that outreach by walking or vehicle delivery (Karaca et al. 2018 The limitations of this study are only tested vaccine delivery for covering short distance below 10 km though the terrain itself is quite difficult to be accessed by conservative transportation modes. As stated, this study was fit for the purpose of evaluating vaccine transport between rural health facilities to the nearest but isolated tribal villages that village's access was impeded by forests, hills and rivers. Though to improve and anticipate future COVID 19 vaccine demands by more isolated tribes living deep in the forest within the distance >10 km from the nearest health facilities, future work is recommended to assess the potential use of fixed-wing UAS with capability of vertical take off landing (VTOL)that operate over much larger distances. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. 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