Proceedings of the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference N. Mustafee, K.-H.G. Bae, S. Lazarova-Molnar, M. Rabe, C. Szabo, P. Haas, and Y.-J. Son, eds. A SIMHEURISTIC FOR THE UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE SURVEILLANCE-ROUTING PROBLEM WITH STOCHASTIC TRAVEL TIMES AND RELIABILITY CONSIDERATIONS Javier Panadero Angel A. Juan Alfons Freixes Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – IN3 Euncet Business School Carl Friedrich Gauss Av. Castelldefels, 08860, SPAIN Carles Serrat Manel Grifoll Universitat Polit` ecnica de Catalunya Dept. of Mathematics – EPSEB Dept. of Civil and Environmental Eng. Barcelona, 08028, SPAIN Mohammad Dehghanimohamamdabadi Northeastern University Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering 360 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115, USA ABSTRACT In the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance-routing problem, a limited fleet of UAVs with driving- range limitations have to visit a series of target zones in order to complete a monitoring operation. This operation typically involves taking images and / or registering some key performance indicators. Whenever this surveillance action is repetitive, a natural goal to achieve is to complete each cycle of visits as fast as possible, so that the number of times each target zone is visited during a time interval is maximized. Since many factors might influence travel times, they are modeled as random variables. Reliability issues are also considered, since random travel times might prevent a route from being successfully completed before the UAV runs out of battery. In order to solve this stochastic optimization problem, a simheuristic algorithm is proposed. Computational experiments contribute to illustrate these concepts and to test the quality of our approach. 1 INTRODUCTION In the context of this paper, the concept of surveillance refers to the monitoring of a set of geographic areas with the purpose of detecting the occurrence of occasional events, which are often unannounced. Examples of such occasional events could be: (i) the potential occurrence of violent incidents in large urban areas, which require regular inspection by police patrols; (ii) the presence of migrants crossing the sea on fragile boats and assuming a high risk for their lives; (iii) the existence of refugees, escaping from war zones, who might need humanitarian assistance; (iv) the presence of potentially dangerous oil vessels or nuclear submarines traveling along the coast; (v) the sudden emergence of wildfires in protected or peri-urban forest areas, specially during periods of hot and dry weather; or (vi) the detection of suspicious people in residential areas to mitigate the risk robbery and other criminal activities. We will assume that this monitoring process will be carried out via the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 1883 978-1-7281-3283-9/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE