Finding a path in the hierarchical road networks

In a hierarchical road network, all roads can be classified into two groups according to their attributes, such as their speed limit and the number of lanes. By splitting the whole network into high-level and low-level subnetworks, the size of the road network to be searched can be reduced, and more human-oriented paths can be obtained. In this paper, we define a convenient path in the hierarchical road network and propose an algorithm for finding that path. The proposed algorithm produces a convenient and approximately shortest path with little computational effort by reducing the number of nodes to be considered. The difference between the length of the paths produced by the proposed algorithm and by existing algorithms and that of the shortest path of the whole network is discussed. Some experimental results are given to show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.