Modelling of Emergency Vehicles Route Choice with Use of Trajectory Data

Abstract

Timing issue is very critical for emergency service. Due to the increasing traffic it has become more and more challenging for emergency vehicles to reach their destinations within a given service period in cities, especially during rush hours. Therefore, there is a need to model routing strategies to support emergency vehicles. Microscopic traffic simulation can therefore be an adequate decision-support tool for route strategies analysis. The GPS positions of 24 emergency vehicles in Brunswick have been tracked over a time period of 5 years.In this paper, the route choice behavior of emergency vehicles is analyzed with the collected trajectory data in Brunswick, Germany. In addition, microscopic traffic simulation is also used to understand the deviation between simulated and real route choices. For this purpose an emergency vehicle model was implemented in the traffic simulation SUMO. The emergency vehicle model allows vehicle in the simulation to violate red traffic lights and force other traffic participants to give way etc.Emergency vehicle drivers have time pressure when they are on duty. Furthermore, the likelihood for emergency vehicle drivers being involved in a traffic accident is significant higher than for private vehicles. Therefore, their concern on route choice may be different from that of other normal road users. Besides travel time the other essential route choice factors are also investigated and derived for developing the respective route choice model so that the costs of the simulated routes of emergency vehicles are close to those in the reality. It is expected that the developed model can be transferable and applied in other cities.