Utilize technology sharing and training opportunities to form mutually beneficial relationships for successful incident management programs.

Cincinnati metro area’s experience with incident management.

Date Posted
09/16/2005
TwitterLinkedInFacebook
Identifier
2005-L00077

National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 520: Sharing Information between Public Safety and Transportation Agencies for Traffic Incident Management

Summary Information

National Cooperative Highway Research Program Project (520 Sharing Information between Public Safety and Transportation Agencies for Traffic Incident Management ) was completed in 2004 and provides a number of case studies detailing the experiences of nine traffic incident management programs located across the country. The project was initiated to provide lessons learned to agencies considering deploying incident management systems.

The overall purpose of the study was to assist transportation and public safety agencies in better understanding the role each plays in the management of traffic incidents on the highway system. The document contains specific information for each location and also provides guidance to agencies seeking to establish a traffic incident management program or improve an existing program.

Lessons Learned

ARTIMIS (Advanced Regional Traffic Interactive Management Information System) is a mature interagency traffic incident management program located in the Cincinnati metro area that has been operational since 1995. ARTIMIS serves the city of Cincinnati, Ohio and also the city of Covington, Kentucky and is a joint venture between the Ohio DOT and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. A total of 88 miles of freeway are monitored by ARTIMIS using cameras, sensors, and freeway service patrol vans. While ARTIMIS has developed good working relationships with larger public safety organizations such as the Covington and Cincinnati Police Departments, they have also worked to establish good working relationships with many local jurisdictions including police, fire and emergency medical services.



The ARTIMIS experience in building successful partnership for incident management is presented below.

  • Ensure buy-in by the first responders to implement a successful incident management program. Transportation professionals deploying ARTIMIS recognized this and utilized their resources to achieve that much needed buy-in. ARTIMIS has also benefited from the experiences of its leaders who have served in public safety positions in the past. This experience helped leaders recognize the need to draw public safety officers to ARTIMIS and to help them see the benefits of working together to improve traffic incident management. Unique relationships and strong leadership within ARTIMIS have resulted in a very collaborative and beneficial incident management program for both first responders and the transportation community.
  • Consider technology sharing and training opportunities between the DOT and the local police departments to reduce time for roadway closures. Public safety officers need to be diligent in their collection of evidence at crash scenes and it is not uncommon for such events to require long periods of closure of highway facilities to protect evidence and police officers. ARTIMIS primary concern is the operational condition of the highway facilities during such events, once victims are removed from the scene. One example of resource-sharing included the DOT’s purchasing of Global Positioning System (GPS) surveying equipment for use by the local police departments to help assist in the data collection necessary to document fatal and serious injury crashes. To assist officers to document accident scenes more efficiently and more accurately, ARTIMIS worked to provide GPS surveying training necessary to fully utilize this equipment to public safety officers in the region. The result has been a solid working relationship based on trust and recognition of the importance of each agency’s responsibilities. One public safety officer estimated that the time savings for roadway closures after fatal accidents was as much as 1.5 to 2 hours with the use of GPS enabled surveying equipment.
  • Use the partnership opportunity to introduce incident management to the police officers early on while they are still cadets in the Police Academy. It was noted that ARTIMIS has begun to provide training to Cincinnati Police Academy cadets on the services that ARTIMIS can provide to them to improve their experiences while on highway patrol duty. This early exposure of the cadets to the existing partnerships serves to strengthen the strong bond between public safety officials and transportation professionals in the greater Cincinnati area.