Real-Time UAV scheduling under hazardous weather conditions using an integrated fuzzy logic and machine learning framework

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in precision agriculture, specifically palm farm management, is perpetually challenged by dynamic and extreme weather. From sudden wind gusts and thermal stress to destructive regional events like sandstorms and flash floods, these hazards severely constrict operational windows. This paper proposes a robust, hybrid scheduling framework that integrates fuzzy logic inference with an ensemble of machine learning classifiers to enhance real-time UAV flight reliability. The primary novelty of this research lies not in a new mathematical paradigm, but in its specialized application: the holistic integration of region-specific agricultural hazards into a real-time, decision-fusion architecture. The framework classifies takeoff viability into three categories (SAFE, CAUTION, and UNSAFE) automatically issuing alerts to trigger preventative measures and preserve hardware. By leveraging both short-term farm datasets and a decade of historical weather records, the fuzzy logic component reacts to rapid environmental shifts while establishing safety baselines. Simultaneously, tree-based ensemble models (Gradient Boosting, XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost) analyze non-linear atmospheric interactions, achieving up to 99.67% accuracy in predicting safe windows. Comprehensive sensitivity analyses, including evaluations without SMOTE and seasonal temporal holdout validations, confirm the model’s robustness against class imbalance and unseen extremes. Empirical benchmarking demonstrates the framework's superiority over existing hybrid approaches, highlighting the necessity of combining adaptive fuzzy reasoning with deep historical learning for smart farming.