Reducing Traffic Congestion Using Geo-fence Technology: Application for Emergency Car

Abstract

Rapid growth of urbanization has attracted attentions toward sustainability. Creating smart cities can contribute to the green growth of countries because of their socio-economic, socio-environmental and eco-efficiency benefits. Intelligent Transportation Systems are a key solution to traffic management in the way to create a smart city. Not only the huge amount of time and money is wasted behind traffic lights, but also many people lose their lives in ambulances due to late hospital arrivals. In the following paper, we introduce geo-fencing approach to help emergency cars pass traffic lights in the shortest time as possible. Our location of interest is a cross road that contains traffic signals, and our users are emergency cars. To create a geo-fence, modern mobile applications can either specify latitude and longitude of the four-way edges, or treat the geo-fence as an area with its boundaries. The user's vicinity from its current location to the nearby features can be detected and informed to the administrator. When an emergency car possessing a specific ID approaches the predefined traffic light enclosure, a report is sent from its iPhone or Android device to the cloud networks. When the vehicle is identified/ verified, a message is issued to the Android-based processors inside the smart traffic lights. The lights will remain green until the vehicle passes the intersection. The desired hospitals or police stations can also be informed of the emergency car's location and arrival time. In our simulation, we used Gimbal Geo-fence cloud and Google cloud for verification and security.