Finding the safest path: the case of Yemen
Mahmood Saleh Alzubaidi, Dena Al‐Thani · 2021
The shortest path algorithm is widely used to find the shortest path in terms of the total sum of edge weight between two nodes in a graph. The edge weights can be set to be any cost definition on any existing problem. Due to the current crisis in some countries, people cannot identify the best road to drive between cities. Therefore, this paper implements Dijkstra's Algorithm-based solution to provide the best path between Yemen cities. Three different factors are considered: the first is to identify the shortest path in terms of road safety, while the second is to identify the shortest path in terms of distance. The third factor is to identify the shortest path based on road quality. Those factors mainly aim to calculate the shortest path for the drivers, in general, to reach the desired destination while avoiding the poorly conditioned roads, including dangerous, long-distance, and impaired quality. However, this approach might not give the shortest path in terms of distance, but it meets the need to save many drivers' and passengers' lives by avoiding passing through conflict areas or bad roads that may damage their cars. To the best of our knowledge and literature, this is the first solution for Yemen's current road issue. We have used object-oriented programming to implement the proposed solution, and it can be enhanced and adopted in the future by a different country.