, T. Suzuki

Road information sharing is vital in disaster response, but it still remains today a significant problem in spite of the recent breakthrough of information and communication technology. In this study, we overview the present situation and structure problems on road information sharing. Two main problems are as follows: i) how to gather the information about which road can be used and ii) how to share the information among different disaster information systems used in the authorities concerned. We propose road information sharing using probe vehicle data to solve the first problem. The characteristics and the possible use of the GIS plotted probe vehicle data in past disasters are discussed. The probe vehicle data provide information to decide which road are likely to remain available at the time, and also where the vehicle turned around, that indicates the road might not be available. The travel time of individual car trips are numerically simulated with and without road information sharing among the cars. The reductions of the travel time depend on numbers of probe cars and road closures. The simulation results indicate that the probe vehicle data can be effectively used to reduce the travel time in a time of disaster, and to gather regional information on available roads