Time-Dependent Alternative Route Planning

We present a new method for computing a set of alternative origin-to-destination routes in road networks with an underlying time-dependent metric. The resulting set is aggregated in the form of a time-dependent alternative graph and is characterized by minimum route overlap, small stretch factor, small size and low complexity. To our knowledge, this is the first work that deals with the time-dependent setting in the framework of alternative routes. Based on preprocessed minimum travel-time information between a small set of nodes and all other nodes in the graph, our algorithm carries out a collection phase for candidate alternative routes, followed by a pruning phase that cautiously discards uninteresting or low-quality routes from the candidate set. Our experimental evaluation on real time-dependent road networks demonstrates that the new algorithm performs much better (by one or two orders of magnitude) than existing baseline approaches. In particular, the entire alternative graph can be computed in less than 0.384sec for the road network of Germany, and in less than 1.24sec for that of Europe. Our approach provides also "quick-and-dirty" results of decent quality, in about 1/300 of the above mentioned query times for continental-size instances

Comparing Alternative Route Planning Techniques: A Comparative User Study on Melbourne, Dhaka and Copenhagen Road Networks

Many modern navigation systems and map-based services do not only provide the fastest route from a source location s to a target location t but also provide a few alternative routes to the users as more options to choose from. Consequently, computing alternative paths has received significant research attention. However, it is unclear which of the existing approaches generates alternative routes of better quality because the quality of these alternatives is mostly subjective. Motivated by this, in this paper, we present a user study conducted on the road networks of Melbourne, Dhaka and Copenhagen that compares the quality (as perceived by the users) of the alternative routes generated by four of the most popular existing approaches including the routes provided by Google Maps. We also present a web-based demo system that can be accessed using any internet-enabled device and allows users to see the alternative routes generated by the four approaches for any pair of selected source and target. We report the average ratings received by the four approaches and our statistical analysis shows that there is no credible evidence that the four approaches receive different ratings on average. We also discuss the limitations of this user study and recommend the readers to interpret these results with caution because certain factors may have affected the participants' ratings.Comment: Extended the user study to also include the road networks of Dhaka and Copenhagen (the previous version only had Melbourne road network

Defining and Computing Alternative Routes in Road Networks

Every human likes choices. But today\u27s fast route planning algorithms usually compute just a single route between source and target. There are beginnings to compute alternative routes, but this topic has not been studied thoroughly. Often, the aspect of meaningful alternative routes is neglected from a human point of view. We fill in this gap by suggesting mathematical definitions for such routes. As a second contribution we propose heuristics to compute them, as this is NP-hard in general

Road Network Layout Planning based on Evaluation of Connectivity and Asset Criticality

State of the art research in ensuring transport infrastructure resilience focuses on adopting a network perspective. However, there is no comprehensive, widespread method for evaluating connectivity and proposing alternative routes to improve it. Presented herein is a framework that: assesses road network connectivity, using a “closeness” measure and focusing on routes passing by the vulnerable asset of bridges; and proposes the development of optimal alternative routes, using a genetic algorithm. The results showed a significant improvement of network connectivity and the potential of the method to serve as the basis for updated transport infrastructure planning practices.H2020 Programme MG7-1-2017 Resilience to extreme (natural and man-made) events, under Grant [769255] ‘‘GIS-based infrastructure management system for optimized response to extreme events of terrestrial transport networks (SAFEWAY)’’

Speed-Consumption Tradeoff for Electric Vehicle Route Planning

We study the problem of computing routes for electric vehicles (EVs) in road networks. Since their battery capacity is limited, and consumed energy per distance increases with velocity, driving the fastest route is often not desirable and may even be infeasible. On the other hand, the energy-optimal route may be too conservative in that it contains unnecessary detours or simply takes too long. In this work, we propose to use multicriteria optimization to obtain Pareto sets of routes that trade energy consumption for speed. In particular, we exploit the fact that the same road segment can be driven at different speeds within reasonable intervals. As a result, we are able to provide routes with low energy consumption that still follow major roads, such as freeways. Unfortunately, the size of the resulting Pareto sets can be too large to be practical. We therefore also propose several nontrivial techniques that can be applied on-line at query time in order to speed up computation and filter insignificant solutions from the Pareto sets. Our extensive experimental study, which uses a real-world energy consumption model, reveals that we are able to compute diverse sets of alternative routes on continental networks that closely resemble the exact Pareto set in just under a second—several orders of magnitude faster than the exhaustive algorithm

Método de construcción de dígrafos a partir de redes viales reales en mapas digitales con aplicaciones en la búsqueda de rutas óptimas

In urban areas, street networks are exposed to road obstructions since some traffic obstacles such as street protest, and traffic congestion are frequent. According to this, drivers are forced to choose alternative routes. Building alternative routes on digital maps represents a solution to these road problems. We determine alternative routes associating graphs to characteristics of real road networks using a API and incorporating optimization algorithms. In this work we propose a method to construct a graph from a zone with traffic blockages considering the network features. With an optimization algorithm (Dijkstra) the alternative routes are defined using digital maps. In addition, a computer program was developed (using Google Maps API) as a tool to create the graph, which is composed of: vertices (intersections) and directional edges (driving direction). This graph is used to establish alternative routes represented as polylines in digital maps.Actualmente las redes viales en zonas urbanas sufren obstrucciones, ya sea por manifestaciones, embotellamientos, u otro tipo de bloqueo, causando el cierre momentáneo o permanente de vías o zonas de tránsito que obligan a conductores a establecer nuevas rutas. Una solución es la creación de rutas alternativas en mapas digitales a partir de dígrafos relacionados con las características de una red vial real, y la aplicación de algoritmos de optimización de rutas. En este trabajo se propone un método para construir dígrafos con una aplicación en la API de Google Maps en la extracción visual de elementos como vértices (intersecciones), aristas (calles) y flechas de sentido (dirección vial), lo que permite la aplicación del algoritmo de Dijkstra en busca de rutas alternativas