ITS To The Rescue!

Vince Pearce
Federal Highway Administration

Large incidents breed large transportation problems. Well-managed transportation response is a key in rapid incident resolution and minimizing incident impact. Just as with everyday traffic incidents, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) supporting effective procedures and institutional coordination is essential to effective management of large incidents.

Addressing this through its Emergency Transportation Operations (ETO) program, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) assessed what transportation agencies needed to accomplish in responding to disasters, and defined four objectives:

• Faster and better prepared responses to major incidents
• Shorter incident durations
• Reduced impact of the incident; and
• More rapid restoration of normal travel conditions.

Working with the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office (JPO), FHWA developed a six-year, $20 million "Emergency Transportation Operations Initiative" applying ITS to achieve these goals. The national ITS program aims to use advanced technology to improve the efficiency and safety of our Nation's surface transportation system. The program has an intermodal nature – incorporating highways, transit, and rail. The JPO, formed in May 1994, serves as the "principal architect and executor of ITS leadership" for ITS in USDOT. The objectives of the ITS JPO are to: (1) provide strategic leadership for ITS research, development, testing, and deployment, (2) guide policy coordination, and (3) ensure resource accountability.

The Primary Concern: Evacuation

When any large, unexpected incident occurs, an evacuation usually results. This is called a "no-notice evacuation." It differs from an evacuation with lots of notice such as that from a hurricane. There's more than one major hazardous materials (hazmat) incident per day in the US, many of which result in an evacuation. Add to this evacuations resulting from wild fires, floods, and other disasters, and the need to manage evacuations effectively is clear.

Transportation can do two important things to minimize the impact of the evacuation-causing event. If incident response is rapid and effective, the size, and possibly need for the evacuation is minimized. Evacuations and response are tightly linked. If the evacuation is required, it can be managed effectively to maximize the safety of the public, facilitate response, and minimize economic impact. We know that transportation management is more effective if information is shared rapidly and accurate between integrated systems. Tools, technology, relationships, information, and techniques are needed in order to accomplish this. The outputs of the Initiative will be tools, techniques, demonstrated benefits, technical guidance, and standards (that define how system components operate within a consistent framework) necessary for state and local agencies and their private sector partners to carry out the "better way of doing it."

A Strong History of Activity

This initiative will build on major advances that have been funded by the JPO. For example:

• The Integrated Incident Management System is demonstrating that data and video from the incident scene can be shared with the operations centers of multiple responders.
• The Capital Wireless Network, CapWIN, is sharing information between transportation and public safety data and voice networks in the Washington, DC metro area.
• Two Computer Aided Dispatch/ITS operational tests are showing how data can be shared between public safety dispatch systems and traffic management systems in Utah and Washington State.
• The iFlorida model deployment includes a major test of how technology can be applied to improve the "predictable" evacuation that occurs twice a year when a race finishes at Daytona Motor Speedway.
• E911 is particularly important to our finding where incidents have occurred, as soon as possible.
• A major demonstration is underway of how onboard technologies and communications can assist in monitoring, and if necessary, stopping movement of hazmat shipments.
• The core incident management standards have been developed and almost completed under the ITS standards program.
• A project is underway to look at how transportation agencies can have voice communications systems at the incident scene that are compatible with those of other responders.
• An assessment was performed of what information transportation management centers need during disasters, and how that information might be integrated to make it useful for decision support.
• Case studies have been prepared examining how surface transportation is affected by different kinds of disasters, and how ITS is applied to managing transportation during them.

Partnership: An Essential Element

To build an environment where the Initiative can succeed, we need both the technology and the working institutional relationships such as are being documented in the projects described above. To accomplish both, we must actively engage stakeholders. FHWA and the JPO have assembled a multimodal team within USDOT to address what is clearly a multimodal set of problems. Although the highway department may manage the roads, they depend on public transit, rail, trucking, and maritime modes to move the evacuees. Within USDOT, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration represents the emergency medical services (EMS) presence at the incident; motor carriers helps us understand hazmat carriers and how truckers will respond; and the Research and Special Programs Administration is U.S.DOT's official hazmat response interface. All modes are impacted by a big incident, so we wanted them all to be involved.

In addition to our Federal transportation representation, of equal importance is expanding our partnership with the Department of Justice and the broader public safety community. After all, at the incident scene, they're in charge. We also want to involve transportation agencies through the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the American Public Transit Association, and related associations, since they need to see the value in implementing the systems and products that we develop. We will also need the help of the private sector, through such partners as ITS America.

Now let's see how the initiative is organized.

A Phased Approach

We organized the Initiative into three Phases. This way, we regularly generate visible results. First we try to minimize the incident impact and the need for evacuation by getting information to towing/recovery and hazmat responders. Then we work on how we use ITS to accomplish evacuation. Third, we focus on incident management standards, so that the elements of incident management work together, producing regional interoperability and an integrated solution.

A demonstration of towing/recovery and hazmat technology is the core of our first Phase. We're working on it first because it has a "dual use" benefit; better handling of towing/recovery and hazmat will improve performance at large and small incidents. The first responder to the scene will snap and send an image from a camera cell phone. The image is routed to the contracted responder(s). It's cheap, quick, easy, and expandable. At least as important, the responder won't mind doing it. We plan to use CAPWIN as our testbed, and they're quite interested in working with us. Since this is commercial technology, it will be readily available to interested agencies, and will continue to advance at a rapid pace driven by interest outside of this marketplace.

There are two other incident-scene areas where we need to explore better application of technology. We need to take a quick look at other forms of technology that can be applied to incident scene traffic control. We will investigate what other applications may make sense, model and demonstrate how they can be applied and their impact, and develop implementation guidance.

There's one other type of hazmat incident scene that's more complex than any other: biohazard. We want to make sure that we understand how transportation will be challenged to respond. This need was confirmed after the Top Officials 2 national terrorism exercise last year. We need to investigate transportation's role, document it, model and exercise how it is accomplished, and develop guidance.

The outputs of this phase are demonstrated technology, improved methods, evaluation of how the technology works and its benefits, and guidance. Most of Phase One will be performed in 2004 and 2005.

Phase Two: Focus on Evacuation

We begin our Phase Two work on Evacuation Planning/Management by detailing the requirements for managing evacuations. We focus our management tool development on the Traffic Estimation and Prediction Systems (TrEPS), a dynamic traffic assignment microsimulation model that has been developed at FHWA's Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center with JPO funding. We will define the tool needs in detail and modify TrEPS accordingly. We will then conduct laboratory tests, followed by field tests with case studies.

Management tools have limited impact, though, if we can't influence evacuee behavior. Traveler Information is one of the most potent tools we have to influence them. It's been clear from our studies of the 9/11/2001 attack and the 2003 blackout (see related case studies in the Electronic Document Library) that more robust information is needed than we can deliver through the broadcast media. The information needs to be localized and more detailed. Traveler information systems, such as 511, dynamic message signs, and traveler advisory radio offer an attractive capability to meet this need. Based on prior experiences, though, we also know we need to have plans in place that address how to use these assets effectively. Our objective in this research is to develop the right approach before a disaster strikes. This part of the Initiative begins by analyzing the traveler information needs during major disasters. We will then assimilate and apply learning from other experiences, and develop guidance.

Transportation management and traveler information depends on working ITS during a disaster, so we need to take actions to make sure that it can be counted on. We will look at how to design and implement ITS to withstand disasters, and develop methods to accomplish rapid restoration. In addition, we will analyze the problem and develop design, implementation, and repair guidance for state and local agencies.

Even if a disaster occurs in a metropolitan area, evacuees flee into the surrounding rural areas. Therefore, we need to be able to manage and communicate with large volumes of travelers in such areas, and help them return to the metro area. Much of our experience with using ITS is in big metropolitan areas, though. We will analyze how ITS can be applied to the evacuation challenge in rural areas, and develop guidance for state and local agencies.

A related problem is that most evacuation takes place outside of the metropolitan commute routes, where we have ITS instrumentation. Transportation management effectiveness is limited if we don't feed real time data back into the process. We plan to look at two ways to gather data from these routes that don't have our existing ITS instrumentation: through very low cost infrastructure instrumentation, and through letting the cars tell us what we need.

We can't justify the cost of traditional ITS infrastructure along these routes. What we need is a less expensive information source. We call this the "web camera" approach; small, cheap, reliable, and producing acceptable but not exceptional output. We will assess the data needs and document available technology alternatives. We're looking for devices that exist now, like the "camera in a traffic signal" that was demonstrated at ITS America and the wireless/solar traffic sensor whose manufacturer recently announced installation of their 450th unit. The initial market for manufacturers should be attractive: the evacuation routes in the 15 hurricane states cover hundreds of miles.

Vehicles represent another opportunity to gather the necessary data. We plan to define the requirements, and then refine and identify approaches and demonstrate the technology through the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) program being funded by the JPO and managed by Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center.

The outputs from this phase include technology alternatives; working technology ready for deployment; improved processes; demonstrated results; and guidance for implementing agencies. We begin early, but the final work isn't completed for several years because we're developing and demonstrating the tools and the VII.

The third phase now helps us tie all of the pieces together.

The Third Phase: Standards Essential for Integration

ITS standards are industry-consensus standards that define how system components operate within a consistent framework, known as the National ITS Architecture. By specifying how systems and components interconnect, the standards promote interoperability. The U.S. DOT ITS Standards Program is working toward the widespread use of standards to encourage the interoperability of ITS systems.

Through cooperative agreements with five standards development organizations (SDOs), the Standards Program has been accelerating development of about 100 non-proprietary, industry-based, consensus ITS standards. The Standards Program is maturing from a primarily standards development program to a standards deployment program by rapidly moving into standards deployment support. Such support includes helping to build credibility in the standards through testing and case studies, providing standards resource information, supporting training and technical assistance to deployers, developing deployment experience-based guidance such as "lessons learned," and assessing the readiness of standards for deployment.

There are about eight standards that will be needed for integration of incident information such as has been described so far. These standards focus on Center-to-Center communication, i.e. transportation management center to emergency management center, transit management center, etc. We plan to finish the last few standards, test and improve them, document implementation methods, and demonstrate that they work under field conditions and produce benefits. We hope to identify locations that are interested in being part of this. The experience will be fed back into the standards program.

Some of the most productive data sharing in managing incidents is between transportation and public safety centers and personnel. For example, 911 data is having a huge impact on speed and accuracy of incident detection and response. Transportation's traffic data is also of great interest to public safety. The public safety community has been as hard at work in developing standards for data interchange as we have been in transportation. We plan to work with the public safety community to crate a "translation" table between our standards and theirs, at the most detailed level. This will provide the cookbook for regional data exchange. We look forward to working jointly with Department of Justice on this. We will compare Justice and Transportation standards, create, test, and document a "translation" table, and provide guidance.

The outputs of this phase include working, documented standards with justification for deployment, guidance, and support. Although the last of the center-to-center standards development will be finished next year, demonstrations will take us through the end of the initiative.

Conclusion

Our focus in this initiative is on major incidents. Major incidents happen every day, so we need to be concerned. Our level of concern is heightened by the new threat of a truly horrific terrorist event. It's a problem we share across all modes, and applies at Federal, State, and local levels. Improved management of major incidents should yield significant results. Products and standards are emerging that can be part of the solution.

We're making a major investment of time and funding to produce technology, techniques, demonstrated benefits, and even support in the standards area. The outcome is consistent with our message of a fully integrated solution. We achieve a lot more than just improving major incident response, though, as almost everything we do can also be applied to day-to-day operation of the transportation network.

Vince Pearce leads the emergency transportation operations team within the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), in the Office of Transportation Operations. He can be reached at vince.pearce@fhwa.dot.gov.