CARRS: A Constraint-Aware, Real-Time Routing System for Emergency Vehicles in Urban Environments

Vincent Sello, Timothy Adeliyi, Ridewaan Hanslo

Emergency vehicles such as police vehicles, fire engines, and ambulances require a stable and efficient route optimization to reach life-critical events in the shortest times possible. However, the dynamic nature of urban traffic makes this ideal scenario much more challenging, causing critical life-threatening delays. Traditional civilian navigation systems cannot account for real-time traffic changes alongside vehicle-specific constraints, creating inadequate routing scenarios. This research presents the Constraint-Aware Real-Time Routing System (CARRS), a unified software architecture tailored for emergency coordination. The CARRS architecture is engineered to fuse together classical pathfinding algorithms such as A*, Dijkstra, and Bidirectional A*, with Constraint Satisfaction Problem methodologies. The Design Science Research Methodology is the research framework, and prototyping is the iterative process. The artifact was empirically evaluated using OpenStreetMap data for major metropolitan road networks, combined with simulated dynamic traffic scenarios. Performance metrics focused on route optimality, constraint adherence, rerouting responsiveness, and the potential for…