A Review on Emergency Vehicle Management for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Designing an Emergency Vehicle Management (EVM) system that can provide competent services with the shortest possible delay is challenging. This is primarily due to the highly complex environments in which they are deployed and the diverse scenarios a vehicle could face after deployment. Compared to other types of vehicles, emergency vehicles operate under time-critical circumstances, move at much higher speeds, and require much greater alertness from the driver. Traditionally, emergency vehicles have not relied on dedicated smart/intelligent systems for increased safety and effectiveness. While much research has been carried out to improve the services of commercial and non-commercial vehicles in general, road emergency vehicles have not received the same research attention. The role of emergency vehicles in new environments (e.g., smart cities) will become increasingly important. To address this issue, we review state-of-the-art research results reported to date, focusing on the deployment and use of EVM. We discuss different dimensions of EVM which include route planning, patient information retrieval, accident detection, driver inattention detection, and several assisting tools and technologies. We identify key advancements in Intelligent Transportation Systems that can be leveraged for safe and effective EVM. We identify challenges inhibiting the usage and deployment of such advancements in EVM, and finally we identify future research directions for a more effective EVM that current developments in ITS have not yet addressed. We hope this work will serve as an accurate and updated source of information for the ever-evolving field of smart cities and ITS.