Dynamic shortest route finder using pgRouting for emergency management

There have been numerous researches on pgRouting and the use of its algorithms for the shortest path analysis. pgRouting which is an extension to PostgreSQL and PostGIS provides libraries for the Shortest Path including Turn Restriction, Driving Distance, Traveling Salesman, etc., through various algorithms like All Pairs Short Path, Bi-directional Dijkstra, and A* and other useful and graph analytics functions. pgRouting functions are based on costs, which are dynamic as opposed to pre-calculated costs and therefore can apply to different kinds of real road scenarios and work without rebuilding or reloading the entire road network. The increasing pervasiveness of natural disasters is drawing people to pay more attention to quick emergency response and planning. The availability of disaster-centric applications will aid in the process of decision making by offering solutions when disaster struck. Despite various possibilities of pgRouting for path analysis, a little research is done, on its usages for emergency managements. Most of the existing research focus on its usability on finding the shortest path based on some cost. In our paper, we have done an extensive path analysis to give the shortest and alternate path based on different disaster conditions affecting road networks such as occurrence of sudden floods and single and multiple obstructions of road segments due to landslides.