Method and system of directing vehicles traveling over roadway during emergency

[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60/774,733, filed Feb. 17, 2006, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated in its entirety.

[0002] 1. Field of the Invention

[0003] The present invention relates to directing vehicles traveling over a roadway during an emergency, such as but not limited to evacuating the vehicles from a cite of a natural or unnatural disaster.

[0004] 2. Background Art

[0005] Any number of natural and unnatural events may require a community or geographical location to move a high quantity of people from a dangerous areas to a safer area. The process may be implemented, at least in part, through vehicular roadway based travel where persons evacuate the scene through mass vehicle transport. The resulting sudden increase in traffic tends to provide gridlock and excessively slow roadway transport. This can be problematic when trying to evacuate an area.

[0009] FIG. 1 illustrates an roadway evacuation system 10 in accordance with one non-limiting aspect of the present invention. The system 10 may include a number of roadways defined relative to a city center 12. The roadways may be single or multi-lane roadways constructed to facilitate vehicular travel with respect to the city center and its surrounding areas (suburbs), as is commonly employed to facilitate movements in metropolitan areas.

[0010] The system 10 may be used to facilitate roadway based evacuations during a natural or unnatural disasters. The system 10 may facilitate instructing vehicles with respect to the disaster and a course of action to evacuate the area. One goal of the system is to limit congestion and gridlock during the evacuation by instructing different vehicles to take different routes out of the influenced area so as to maximize available roadway usage.

[0011] The system 10 may include a number of stationary or land nodes positioned around the geographical area of interest. The nodes may be part of electronically controllable street signs or other displays and/or standalone items dedicated to supporting wireless communication or other communication needs of the present invention. The nodes are shown and predominately described with respect to being land based nodes, however, the present invention is not intended to be so limited and fully contemplates the nodes being satellite or other non-land based nodes.

[0012] A portion of the nodes may be positioned relative to a different roadways to monitor traffic levels. The nodes may determine any number of traffic related characteristics as a function of traffic monitoring sensors and/or information communicated thereto from the vehicles. The nodes may form a mesh or other network for sharing traffic related information and/or one or more of the nodes may be a command center node 14 tasked with assembling and/or processing traffic data from the other nodes.

[0013] One or more vehicles traveling over the roadways or otherwise within the vicinity of the land nodes may include capabilities for wirelessly communicating with the land nodes. Vehicles having such wireless capabilities may be considered as mobile nodes. The mobile nodes may collect data from the vehicles for communication to the other nodes and subsequent use in developing an evacuation strategy. The mobile nodes may form a mesh network or other network with the land nodes and/or other vehicles such that various information may be shared between the same.

[0014] Communication between the land and mobile nodes may be advantageous in rapidly spreading data and other signals through a disaster area. The communication may be used to no only assess the location of vehicles, but the vehicle operating capabilities and quantities and identities of individuals likely to be in the area. This and other information may be helpful in assessing the scope of the disaster and whether the vehicles can be used to facilitate the evacuation. The location of the vehicles can be critical to assessing routes and methods for facilitating the evacuation.

[0015] The nodes may be configured and programmed to support any number of operations as contemplated and required by the present invention. This may include some form of wireless communication capability that allows new nodes and vehicles to be freely added and removed from the network, such as to facilitate instigating and terminating communication with vehicles traveling into and leaving the geographical area of interest.

[0016] The communication between the nodes and the vehicles may be used to assess any number of travel and non-travel related conditions for facilitating the evacuation, including the following: real time traffic volume monitoring (monitoring volume of moving nodes per stationary node, volume of nodes in relation to each other (node densities), speed of moving nodes passing, any emergency event ID of nodes); real time detection of traffic volumes, problems or concerns; control/detection/and reroute solutions real time for emergency entities for volume concerns during emergency evacuations procedures; providing emergency entity with priority ID and privilege during node travel; controlling visual signage for indicating potential dangers for moving nodes

[0017] FIG. 2 illustrates a flowchart 20 of a method of alerting vehicles in accordance with one non-limiting aspect of the present invention. The method generally relates to determining a hazard and communicating with the vehicles in response thereto. The method may be totally or partially executed according to instructions included within a computer-readable or other logically executable system included in any of the nodes identified above.

[0018] Block 22 relates to determining a hazard. The hazard may be determined by one of the nodes and/or a response entity. The hazard determination may include determining the scope of the hazard, its location, area of influence, and any number of other characteristics which may be helpful in facilitating evacuation of the influenced areas. A warning regarding the hazard and information related thereto may be transmitted to the other nodes through node-to-node (including vehicle-to-vehicle) or other wireless and/or wireline communication methodologies so that information related to the node can be rapidly spread.

[0019] Block 24 relates to locating vehicles which may need to be evacuated in response to the hazard. Each of the land nodes may be awoken and requested to scan for vehicles within its corresponding area. Some of the nodes may scan within an area associated with the other nodes in case one or more of the other nodes are lost or otherwise unavailable, thereby providing redundancy and self-healing of the mesh network. The located vehicles may be identified and analyzed, such as for operability, number of possible passengers, etc.

[0020] Block 26 relates to determining an evacuation strategy. The evacuation strategy generally corresponds with instructing the located vehicles with respect to fleeing from the area(s) of danger resulting from the hazard. This may include analysis of the hazard and various pieces of vehicle information, such as vehicle location, vehicle density, roadway capabilities, etc. The information from the nodes may be fed back to a command center for use by emergency response personnel in developing the evacuation strategy. The nodes may be configured to automatically provide an evacuation strategy that may then be checked or updated by the command center.

[0021] Once the evacuation strategy is determined, instructions may be provided to the vehicles through the mesh network. This may include communication between the land nodes and the vehicle nodes and/or vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The instructions may operate with displays and/or other capabilities to the vehicles to facilitate communicating the evacuation strategy and roadway directions to the vehicle operators. The instructions may integrate with vehicle system, such as GPS systems, and/or with dedicated devices, such as a tamper resistant emergency devices included on the vehicles.

[0022] Different vehicles may receive different evacuation strategies depending on any number of variables. One vehicle in a particular area may be instructed to evacuate along one roadway while a nearby vehicle may instructed to evacuating along another roadway so as to avoid congestion. In some cases, the vehicles may be instructed to take action in contradiction to roadside signage, such as evacuating the area against the posted direction of travel, which may be helpful to convert both incoming and outgoing lanes of traffic for outgoing evacuation.

[0023] Block 28 relates to determining changes in the evacuation strategy. The changes may occur on a micro and/or macro level. The micro level may correspond with individual or small group changes in direction based on changes in vehicle congestion or hazard spread. The macro level may correspond with global changes, such as re-routing a large number of vehicles due to loss of a roadway or change in the hazard. This allows the present invention to redirect one or more vehicles or large number of vehicles. Optionally, the nodes closest to the vehicles may constantly assess traffic flow and other evacuation parameters and re-reroute or otherwise re-direct traffic as it deems necessary.

[0024] Block 30 relates to implementing the changes noted above. This may include communicating the changes to the re-routed vehicles and the nodes supporting the same. Like the original evacuation strategy, the re-routing and re-directing may be continuously monitored and adapted according to any number of operating conditions and parameters.

[0025] The present invention, as described above, may be used to direct traffic and facilitate evacuation in response to any number of dangers or hazards. One non-limiting aspect of the present invention may relate to generating an emergency broadcast in response to one or more alarms determining occurrence of the emergency and thereafter automatically communicating the emergency broadcast to one or more vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle communications to alert the vehicles of the emergency. The broadcast may include an evacuation strategy and/or it may simply alert the vehicles to the danger. Optionally, the emergency may be determined as a function of one or more alarms included within one or more buildings and limiting the emergency broadcast to vehicles traveling towards or near an area influenced by the building emergency.

[0026] As required, detailed embodiments of the present invention are disclosed herein; however, it is to be understood that the disclosed embodiments are merely exemplary of the invention that may be embodied in various and alternative forms. The figures are not necessarily to scale, some features may be exaggerated or minimized to show details of particular components. Therefore, specific structural and functional details disclosed herein are not to be interpreted as limiting, but merely as a representative basis for the claims and/or as a representative basis for teaching one skilled in the art to variously employ the present invention.

[0027] While embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, it is not intended that these embodiments illustrate and describe all possible forms of the invention. Rather, the words used in the specification are words of description rather than limitation, and it is understood that various changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.