There are a number of converging forces that will allow an improved and even more efficient interconnect between public safety operations and those management systems used by the traffic management community to address incident management and congestion mitigation. In the rural environment, increasing the efficiency of this interconnect will also materially assist in the deployment of Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) and in the provision of more timely traveller information. Overall, fleet efficiencies and economy of operation, 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 incidents, to minimisation of the time required to transport the injured to a medical facility, interconnection promises great benefits with minimal incremental expense required to link the systems. While, to date, there has been resistance to this interconnection of public safety operations and traffic management, proliferation of the cell phone has done much to bring the systems together. From the traffic engineer's perspective the cell phone has become one of the fastest incident notification devices available. From the Public Safety perspective, emergency call takers are facing a daily increase in the number of emergency notification calls transmitted by cell phone. Over 90% of these are traffic related; the cell phone has become the enabling technology for Automatic Crash Notification (ACN). Coupled with this is the imminent emergence of a number of technologies that will provide the ability to accurately, rapidly and easily locate these wireless devices. Thus the cell phone is rapidly becoming the driving force to bring the two functions together. This paper highlights some of the methods and levels of interconnect; discusses the pluses and minuses against a backdrop of real-world examples and lays out a potential path forward. (Author/publisher)
Abstract