PRESENCE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES TECHNOLOGY IN THE RESEARCH DOMAINS OF SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCES

Sustainability sciences are a new approach for the analysis of socio-ecological systems that, over the past twenty years, have evolved over a timeframe that is similar and parallel to that of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology. A bibliometric analysis was performed using Bibliometrix to identify the study areas of different types of UAV in the main research domains of the sustainability sciences. The database used was built from the hierarchical taxonomy of three types of platforms: fixed wing, multirotor and hybrid with vertical take-off and landing capacity (VTOL) and, sixteen research domains related to the sciences of sustainability: sustainable development, fishing, agriculture, tourism, forests, biodiversity, agroforestry, business, energy systems, water resources, urban planning, health, soil, wildlife, socio-ecological systems and industry. A total of 1,293 scientific papers for the period 1984-2020 show that sustainability science research began as previously separate research groups that are evolving under an interdisciplinary approach to address various issues. While applications combined with fixed-wing and multi-rotor VANT are recently focused on solving problems regarding the conservation, use and exploitation of ecosystems, the use of hybrid VTOL VANT in combination with fixed-wing or multi-rotor VANT is focused on the design and performance of hybrid vehicles for its commercialization or applications in the energy industry.