  Emergency communication is critical but challenging after natural disasters
when ground infrastructure is devastated. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer
enormous potential for agile relief coordination in these scenarios. However,
effectively leveraging UAV fleets poses additional challenges around security,
privacy, and efficient collaboration across response agencies. This paper
presents a robust blockchain-enabled framework to address these challenges by
integrating a consortium blockchain model, smart contracts, and cryptographic
techniques to securely coordinate UAV fleets for disaster response.
Specifically, we make two key contributions: a consortium blockchain
architecture for secure and private multi-agency coordination; and an optimized
consensus protocol balancing efficiency and fault tolerance using a delegated
proof of stake practical byzantine fault tolerance (DPoS-PBFT). Comprehensive
simulations showcase the framework's ability to enhance transparency,
automation, scalability, and cyber-attack resilience for UAV coordination in
post-disaster networks.
