Proposal for an inundation hazard index of road links for safer routing services in car navigation systems

Abstract

Inundation of roads by heavy rainfall has attracted more attention than traffic accidents, traffic congestion, and construction because it simultaneously causes travel delays and threatens driver safety. For these reasons, in this paper, we propose an inundation hazard index (IHI) of road links, which shows the possibility of inundation of road links caused by rainfall. To generate the index, we have used two key data sources, namely the digital elevation model (DEM) and past rainfall records of when inundation has occurred. IHI is derived by statistically analyzing the relationships between the normalized relative height of the road links calculated from DEM within the watershed and past rainfall records. After analyzing the practical applicability of the proposed index with a commercial car navigation system through a set of tests, we confirmed that the proposed IHI could be implemented to choose safer routes, with reduced chances of encountering roads having inundation risks.