Abstract—A disaster situation is an event that alters in the normal execution of activities. A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-controlled, autonomous wireless network used in an uncertain environment with decentralized control. In disaster, when communication between nodes is not performed properly, MANET can impart an important role of communication between nodes in uncertain situations. In MANET, routing is considered one of the most salient aspects of data transfer in a disaster situation. Proactive and reactive protocols are used as standard in various applications of MANET owing to the simplicity in their design and performance. Combining three routing protocols makes a hybrid approach to get better performance inefficient route discovery and maintenance. This is because reactive routing protocols, sometimes, do not provide better performance in heavy traffic and load, especially in a disaster. This is because the hybrid approach is very useful for fast convergence with low memory and power management. This paper introduces an improved hybrid routing protocol (IHRP) approach that combines two reactive and one proactive routing protocol to provide efficient route discovery and maintenance mechanisms. The simulation environment is used for the proposed approach. Results after simulation illustrate that it provides better performance in data packet delivery, routing load, throughput, and end-to-end delay data packet delivery, routing load, throughput, and end-to-end delay than the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Zone-based Routing Protocol (ZRP). The contrasting results between the IHRP and existing protocol indicate that the IHRP outperforms and increases the performance from 9% to 12%.