The article presents a methodology to determine access routes to places with difficult access, situated outside the regular transport network. To determine the optimum route, the existing road network was used, along with terrain passability maps, as well as high-resolution digital terrain models together with the traction parameters of the vehicle to enable conducting a detailed analysis of micro-relief and excluding inaccessible areas. The research was extended to include a comprehensive analysis of terrain accessibility for areas located in the vicinity of the capital cities of three European countries on various levels of economic development: Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. The degree of development of the analysed area was determined with the use of the gross domestic product (GDP), human development index (HDI), and the road quality coefficient. The case study presented in the paper illustrates the practical application of the developed methodology that was implemented to a real crisis situation. Access routes were determined for a MAN TGM 15.290 vehicle that went to take part in emergency action in buildings situated approximately 500 m away from paved roads. The developed methodology may be widely used in crisis management, where the emergency actions often require rescue units to access remote places.

The subject of this article is to determine COVID-19 vulnerability risk and its change over time in association with the state health care system, turnover, and transport to support the crisis management decision-making process. The aim was to determine the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index (CVI) based on the selected criteria. The risk assessment was carried out with methodology that includes the application of multicriteria analysis and spatiotemporal aspect of available data. Particularly the Spatial Multicriteria Analysis (SMCA) compliant with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which incorporated selected population and environmental criteria were used to analyse the ongoing pandemic situation. The influence of combining several factors in the pandemic situation analysis was illustrated. Furthermore, the static and dynamic factors to COVID-19 vulnerability risk were determined to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 at the early stage of the pandemic situation. As a result, areas with a certain level of risk in different periods of time were determined. Furthermore, the number of people exposed to COVID-19 vulnerability risk in time was presented. These results can support the decision-making process by showing the area where preventive actions should be considered.

The aim of the paper was to study the possibility of using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to determine the shoreline of natural watercourses.According to the Water Law, the shoreline is defined by: the edge of the shore if it is visible, and in other cases it is the boundary of persistent grass growth, or the line, which is determined on the basis of the average water level of a period of at least 10 years. The study included an analysis of the possibility of determining the shore line in all of these cases, using aerial photos obtained from an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) on a particular stretch of the river Narew.In order to determine the shoreline defined by the edge of the shore, a point cloud together with the necessary GIS tools were used to generate planes which then made it possible to determine that edge. Defining the shoreline using this method was done with an accuracy of ±0.21 m.The study shows that the best results for determining the shoreline were obtained using either the edge of the shore or the line, which is determined according to the average water level of a period of at least 10 years.Due to the very ambiguous course of the shoreline defined by the boundary of persistent grass growth, it would be advisable to eliminate this remove from the Water Law.

Determination of the movement route for troops is a key element of the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB). In this article, the authors present a methodology of using terrain passability maps for generating graphs that enable the determination of the optimum route between two points. The proposed methodology enables the determination of different variants of routes: a longer route that passes all terrain obstacles or a route that is shorter but more difficult to pass. The study presents the possibility of implementing the proposed methodology for the movement of military tactical compounds that move inside a 500 m wide corridor. The selected test area was the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea. The analyses were conducted with the use of level 2 Vector Map.

The article presents a complete methodology to determine terrain passability as well as its application based on various configurations of input data. The methodology was developed with the use of the methods that had been created by the authors in their previous research projects. The determination of terrain passability consists of two stages: The first stage involves conducting the analysis of micro-relief with the aim to identify impassable spots in the area, while the second stage consists in determining the route for a specific vehicle that will avoid the existing obstacles formed by the micro-relief. Both these analyses generate results based only on a detailed digital terrain model (with a resolution of 1 m) and the traction parameters of the vehicles for which terrain passability is determined. One of the processes that are part of this methodology is the generalisation of the digital terrain model, which significantly improves the efficiency of the performed calculations. Test results demonstrated that the presented methodology enables successful automated generation of passability maps for specific vehicles and the creation of routes for such vehicles. The routes differ depending on the type of vehicle, which results directly from the fact that vehicles have different traction parameters. Nevertheless, the test results were satisfactory and demonstrated that the developed methodology may be applied by bodies that are responsible for planning military operations or crisis management activities. W artykule zaprezentowano całościową metodykę wyznaczania przejezdności terenu, a także jej zastosowanie w oparciu o różne konfiguracje danych wejściowych. Do opracowania metodyki wykorzystano metody, które zostały opracowane przez autorów we wcześniejszych badaniach. Wyznaczanie przejezdności terenu składa się z dwóch etapów: przeprowadzenie analizy mikrorzeźby, której celem jest wskazanie w terenie miejsc nieprzejezdnych, a także wyznaczenie trasy dla konkretnego pojazdu, która omijać będzie występujące w terenie przeszkody związane z mikrorzeźbą. Obie analizy do generowania wyników wykorzystują jedynie szczegółowy numeryczny model terenu (o rozdzielczości 1 m) oraz parametry trakcyjne pojazdów, dla których wyznaczana jest przejezdność terenu. Jednym z procesów wchodzących w skład metodyki jest uogólnienie numerycznego modelu terenu, które znacznie zwiększa wydajność prowadzonych obliczeń. Wyniki badań pokazały, że opracowana metodyka z powodzeniem automatycznie opracowuje mapy przejezdności dla konkretnych pojazdów, a także wyznacza dla nich trasy przejazdu. Są one inne dla różnych pojazdów, co wynika bezpośrednio z faktu, że posiadają one odmienne parametry trakcyjne. Niemniej jednak, zadowalające wyniki badań pokazały, że opracowana metodyka może być stosowana przez organy odpowiedzialne za planowanie operacji wojskowych czy zarządzania kryzysowego.

This research presents the methodology of the iterative route determination process, which takes into account the microrelief in real time. The determination of safe and secure routes is a pivotal element of planning and conducting military operations or various crisis management actions, as well as navigating troops or unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to reach their destination. This method uses only high resolution digital elevation model (DEM) and tractive parameters of a given vehicle to determine the route completely automatically. During the process, the microrelief analysis is performed, which aims to check whether the generated route and its surrounding is passable for a given vehicle. If it occurs that it is not, the algorithm determines new route and works in this manner until the final passable route is found. The conducted research showed that the developed method is able to determine the routes between the start and end point, avoiding all microrelief obstacles. A huge advantage of it is its universality because all parameters used for the computation can be adjusted by the user. The research also shows that their modification influences the performance of the method. The comprehensiveness of the tool makes it applicable to military or crisis management planning operations.