Reducing emergency services arrival time by using vehicular communications and Evolution Strategies

Nowadays, traffic jams in urban areas have become a problem that keeps growing every year since the number of vehicles in our cities is continuously increasing. One of the most common causes producing traffic jams are vehicle accidents. Moreover, the arrival time of the emergency services could be raised due to traffic congestion. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have a key role in order to reduce or mitigate this problem. In this paper, we propose four different approaches addressing the traffic congestion problem, comparing them to obtain the best solution. Using V2I communications, we are able to accurately estimate the traffic density in a certain area, which represents a key parameter to perform efficient traffic redirection, thereby reducing the emergency services arrival time, and avoiding traffic jams when an accident occurs. Specifically, we propose two approaches based on the Dijkstra algorithm, and two approaches based on Evolution Strategies. Notice that, when an accident occurs, time is a critical issue, and the strategies here proposed contribute to find the optimal solution within a short time period.