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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Reducing traffic-related fatalities and improving emergency response capabilities are two primary goals of the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT) Joint Program Office (JPO) Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Public Safety Program. To help achieve these goals, the ITS Public Safety Program has implemented a number of initiatives with specific objectives toward:

Most major metropolitan areas in the United States rely on some type of advanced traffic management system(s) (ATMS) to help manage mobility, congestion, and incident response. Many States have installed an extensive infrastructure of remote cameras, loop detectors, and other ITS applications that provide traffic management services. These systems are operated from centralized Traffic Management Center (TMCs), where traffic-related information is received and processed and appropriate remedial actions are deployed and coordinated. These TMCs are typically the hub of traffic management operations.

The hub of public safety and law enforcement operations is the dispatch center, where calls for assistance are received and officers are dispatched to respond to those calls. Dispatch operations are managed by Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems that track information about incidents that require a public safety, law enforcement, traffic management, or emergency medical services (EMS) response and help in managing that response.

These two separate systems overlap when responding to traffic incidents, which often have a need for law enforcement, EMS, and traffic management responses. However, to date, there have been few cases where the TMC systems used to manage traffic have been integrated with the CAD systems used to manage public safety and law enforcement. To investigate the benefits of integrating CAD and TMC systems, the USDOT ITS JPO-funded the CAD-TMC Field Operational Test (FOT) in Washington State and Utah, as well as an independent evaluation of that FOT. This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the Washington State CAD-TMC FOT.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

The current USDOT ITS JPO-funded Computer-Aided Dispatch Traffic Management Center (CAD-TMC) integration and data exchange FOT, is one of many initiatives implemented to meet the ITS Public Safety Program goals. The objective of the FOT was to demonstrate how the integration of CAD and TMC systems can improve information flows between emergency response agencies, and in turn, improve incident response capabilities. The intent was to develop the technical capability to exchange information as well as identify and resolve the institutional barriers that can arise when multiple agencies are involved in this type of project. To achieve these objectives, the USDOT ITS JPO sponsored two FOTs that integrated CAD-TMC systems in Washington State, and Utah, respectively. Both States have well-established incident response programs and have developed the institutional relationships needed to support multiple agency information exchange.

The rationale for the FOT is well stated in the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the CAD-TMC Integration FOT evaluation:

To date there has been little effort to integrate highway traffic management with public safety systems. Nor have systems supporting public safety operations been developed in the context of a regional ITS architecture or ITS standards. Most existing CAD systems are proprietary and not equipped to easily share information with systems with dissimilar interfaces. Further complicating integration are various data, message formats and standards used by public safety agencies and transportation agencies. Nevertheless, CAD and ATMS systems can be integrated and data can be shared, provided that a number of related institutional and technical challenges are addressed. New procedures and methods of response that capitalize on the availability of the shared information must also be developed.6

By 2003, the USDOT ITS JPO had signed cooperative agreements with the States of Washington and Utah to conduct CAD-TMC FOTs that would integrate State Highway Patrol CAD systems with the TMCs operated by the State DOTs. Later that year, the UDOT ITS JPO contracted with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to conduct an independent evaluation of the FOTs.

1.3 REPORT ORGANIZATION

This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the Washington CAD-TMC integration FOT. The remainder of the report is structured as follows:



5 Excerpted in part from the USDOT ITS Program Safety Web site: <http://www.its.dot.gov/pubsafety/> (February 7, 2006).

6 USDOT, ITS JPO-sponsored RFP, "National Evaluation of the Computer-Aided Dispatch - Traffic Management Center Integration Field Operational Test Request for Proposals," March 7, 2003, page 1.

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