Abstract
Emergency response time often makes difference between life and death in cases that man-made or natural disasters happen. In this paper, we propose a real-time route guidance strategy to reduce the traveling time of emergency vehicles. Our strategy consists of path planning and reverse path planning for emergency vehicles. Since the traffic condition changes at any time, we use current and historical traffic information to plan a path. Furthermore, we propose a lane reservation scheme for emergency vehicles to minimize the crash risks. Before an emergency vehicle arrives at each road segment, Road Side Units (RSUs) will at suitable time start to disseminate the warning message so that other drivers have enough time to take proper actions such as speed deceleration or changing lane. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can reduce more than 20% traveling time of emergency vehicles comparing to the shortest path approach with sirens and lights to alert other drivers. By reducing the traveling time, the emergency rescue teams have higher probability to rescue lives and property in time.