Intelligent Traffic Management for Emergency Vehicles with a Simulation Case Study

For emergency vehicle driver it is challenging to reach the incident location as fast as possible. Therefore emergency vehicles are allowed to use special rights in case of an emergency situation, e.g. violate red traffic lights or drive faster than the maximum allowed speed. Driving an emergency vehicle is a physical and mentally demanding task, the driver has to anticipate how other traffic participants will react and decide whether it is safe to use special rights. To support emergency vehicle drivers an intelligent traffic management concept was evaluated in this research study. The optimal green phases of a traffic light control will be calculated to provide a green wave for emergency vehicles. Additionally, the negative impact for other traffic participants should be minimized The main idea was to set a green phases which are long enough but as short as possible to let the emergency vehicle pass the intersection. The concept was simulated with the traffic simulation SUMO Lopez et al. (2018) with different traffic scenarios. The results show that the travel times of the emergency vehicle could be reduced while the impact for other traffic participants is relatively small.