Trafforithm: A traffic-aware shortest path algorithm in real road networks with traffic influence factors

The shortest path computation between two given locations in a road network is an important problem that finds applications in a wide range of fields. There has been a lot of research efforts targeting at the preciseness and performance of finding shortest paths in road networks. However, rarely of them have really taken into account the influence of traffic factors such as traffic lights, road conditions, traffic jams and turning cost. In other words, existing approaches are rather purely based on the topology of the network, but forgot that there are multiple factors in a real road network that impact the accuracy of the algorithm. The contribution of our paper is twofold. First, we present a generic two-layered framework for moving objects in road networks environment and demonstrate the important role of traffic factors on path finding and route planning. Second, we develop an efficient parallel shortest path algorithm in road networks with the consideration of traffic influence factors. Detailed analysis presented shows that our parallel TRAFFic-aware shortest path algORITHM (Trafforithm), is accurate and practical.