The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) conducted a federally funded Field Operational Test (FOT) to develop and test a MAYDAY/9-1-1 system. The system automatically routes 9-1-1 calls initiated by Telematics Service Providers (TSP) to an appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) based on vehicle location information provided by the instrumented vehicles. This FOT voice routing solution is called TSP Emergency Call Routing Service (TSPECRS). In addition, the Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) or Advanced Automatic Crash Notification (AACN) data from the TSP are shared in real-time with MnDOT in support of emergency response and management via the Conditioning Acquisition and Reporting System (CARS).
Battelle, in association with the Melcher Group, was under contract to the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Joint Program Office (JPO) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to conduct an independent evaluation of the MAYDAY/9-1-1 FOT. This national evaluation was performed under Battelle’s contract DTFH61-02-C-00134, Task BA34010 with USDOT.
The scope of this evaluation is to conduct an acceptance test on the voice routing system, TSPECRS; perform an analyses on ACN/AACN data routing, solicit feedback from the users of the voice and data routing systems, and identify potential deployment issues. This evaluation report documents the process, results, and issues encountered in this FOT, from which lessons learned can be drawn to provide guidance for the future deployment of this or a similar system.
Section 2.0 provides a description of the FOT. Specifically, Section 2.1 describes the problems related to the routing of Telematics-initiated 9-1-1 calls and the lack of sharing of the TSP data. Section 2.2 describes the solutions developed by the FOT. Section 2.3 provides a brief overview of the field operational tests conducted over the FOT voice and data routing systems.
Section 3.0 provides a description of the evaluation approach, including Evaluation Objectives and Scope (Section 3.1), System Performance Evaluation Approach (Section 3.2), and User Acceptance and Deployment Issues Evaluation Approach (Section 3.3).
Section 4.0 presents the Evaluation Findings. Section 4.1 describes the voice routing system field test procedures and results. Section 4.2 describes the analyses and results in support of the assessment of the FOT data routing performance. Section 4.3 presents the findings of user acceptance of the FOT systems and feedback from FOT deployment team and third-party experts.
Section 5.0 presents the conclusions. In particular, Section 5.1 presents a summary of findings related to the evaluation hypotheses. Section 5.2 provides conclusions based on the quantitative and qualitative evaluation results.