Integrating Railroad Crossing Blockage Information in First Responder Dispatching Route Planning

Finding effective routes is critical to support the decision-making of first responders to save lives in emergency and accident situations. Effective routing planning requires accurate traffic information including railroad blockage that could lead to significant delays. This study aims to improve the decision-making efficiency of emergency responding by integrating railroad crossing blockage and dynamic traffic information into routing planning process. Specifically, we propose a data-driven algorithm that considers real-time train blockage time windows in the route planning process. Through a series of first responder vehicle dispatching scenarios in Columbia, South Carolina, we demonstrate that the framework can assist first responders in finding the best route with the minimum response time in an emergency. Results from the scenarios show that the method can save as much as 61.6% of response time compared with the time calculated based on existing practices. This study demonstrates the benefit and necessity of integrating train operation information into emergency responding vehicle route planning to save lives.