Fast paths in large-scale dynamic road networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a heuristic method for fast path computation in large-scale dynamic road networks, combining static highway hierarchies with dynamic traffic information to improve route planning efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a highway hierarchy-based heuristic algorithm that efficiently computes fast paths in large, dynamic road networks by maintaining static hierarchies and updating with real-time traffic data.

Findings

The method significantly reduces computation time for fast path queries.

It effectively incorporates dynamic traffic information into static hierarchy-based routing.

The approach is practical for real-time traffic navigation systems.

Abstract

Efficiently computing fast paths in large scale dynamic road networks (where dynamic traffic information is known over a part of the network) is a practical problem faced by several traffic information service providers who wish to offer a realistic fast path computation to GPS terminal enabled vehicles. The heuristic solution method we propose is based on a highway hierarchy-based shortest path algorithm for static large-scale networks; we maintain a static highway hierarchy and perform each query on the dynamically evaluated network.