There are a number of converging forces that will allow an improved and even more efficient interconnect between public safety dispatch systems and those management systems used by traffic engineers to address incident management and congestion mitigation. Fleet efficiencies and economies, incident zone safety and improvements in the time required to restore traffic, are all areas that benefit from this close interconnect. From more rapid detection, verification and response to minimisation of the time required to transport the injured to a medical facility, interconnection promises great benefits with minimal incremental expense to link the systems. While, to date, there has been a widespread reluctance to bring the two systems together, proliferation of the cellular phone has done much to bring the systems together. The cell-phone has become one of the fastest incident detection devices available. Public Safety emergency call takers are facing a daily increase in the number of emergency notification calls transmitted by cell-phone. And over 90% of these are highway related. Thus the cell-phone is rapidly becoming a driving force to bring the two functions together. This force will dramatically increase as the ability to accurately, rapidly and easily geo-locate a cell-phone reaches fruition in the next several years. This paper highlights some of the methods and levels of interconnect, discusses the pluses and minuses against a backdrop of real-world examples.
Abstract