Incident Command System Strategies for Incident Management on Freeways: A Simulation Analysis

Incident Command System (ICS) has become a primary tool used to reduce the impact of non- recurrent traffic congestion due to traffic incidents on major roadways such as interstates. Longer incident clearance time comes with notable delay to motorists and an increase in the likelihood of a secondary incident that is often more severe than the initial congestion-causing incident. Incident management and clearance involve multi-agency emergency response including representatives from the state department of transportation, highway patrol, fire service, emergency medical service, towing, and hazardous-spill cleanup services. The traditional incident management approach is a step-by-step approach, largely performed independently with limited coordination among involved agencies. To minimize the incident response time, it is essential that every agency involved in the response operation work effectively and efficiently. In this study, an inter-agency communication framework was developed to improve the coordination among involved agencies in South Carolina. This research investigates the effectiveness of these multi-agency coordinated ICS strategies for managing traffic incidents in South Carolina by considering their potential impacts in reducing incident duration. Traffic micro-simulation models were developed to analyze the impact of three ICS strategies on total incident duration. A benefit cost analysis revealed that the benefits of each ICS strategy far outweigh the cost of implementation.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB20 Freeway Operations. Alternate title: Incident Command System Strategies for Incident Management on Freeways: Simulation Analysis.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Rahman, Mizanur
  • Khan, Sakib Mahmud
  • Chowdhury, Mashrur
  • Huynh, Nathan
  • Ogle, Jennifer
  • Dey, Kakan
  • Bhavsar, Parth
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Coordination; Emergency response time; Freeway operations; Incident management; Interorganizational relations; Microsimulation; Traffic incidents
• Identifier Terms: Incident Command System
• Geographic Terms: South Carolina
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01558166
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-5872
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 30 2015 9:33AM