Emergency vehicle routing through a dynamically changing urban area

This research deals with emergency vehicle routing where a disaster happens on the way to a destination. It involves the development and application of P/N fuzzy logic routing algorithms for an emergency vehicle routing problem. Based on Positive/Negative fuzzy logic and a standard fuzzy system, a new algorithm is developed and applied in the downtown area in Louisville, Kentucky to route an emergency vehicle through an urban area. The algorithm combines a basic searching algorithm with P/N fuzzy logic, where the basic searching algorithm can provide all reasonable and qualified candidate routes from the start point to destination and the P/N fuzzy logic part is responsible for finding those taken by emergency vehicles. Also, a special kind of disaster which can spread with wind, like tear gas, is applied in the emergency vehicle routing problem to mimic the more complicated disaster situation.;Dijkstra's algorithm, which is one of the most important algorithms for the shortest path problem, is employed in the emergency vehicle routing problem in this research. In other words, the emergency vehicle routing problem is treated as a shortest path problem with all main factors combined into link costs.;At last, some analysis about the performances of the routes chosen by P/N fuzzy algorithm and Dijkstra's algorithm is presented, and more missions are done with both P/N fuzzy algorithm and Dijkstra's algorithm. At last, their capabilities of combining main factors, the capability of incorporating the linguistic measures, the capability of multiple selections and transparencies are also analyzed.