Evaluation of Incident Management Strategies and Technologies Using an Integrated Traffic/incident Management Simulation

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research

Volume

2

Issue

2/3

First page number:

155

Last page number:

186

Abstract

This paper describes Rutgers Incident Management System (RIMS) software that is developed to evaluate the benefits of various incident management strategies and technologies. This tool can generate incidents and test various response strategies and technologies. South Jersey highway network is used as a test network due to the available historical incident data. The evaluated incident management strategies include the deployment of Variable Message Signs (VMS) to divert traffic during incidents and the use of Freeway Service Patrols (FSPs) for detecting and verifying incidents efficiently. The simulation-based evaluations also include the effect of cellular phone users in the network on the incident detection and verification times. The results show that the studied incident management strategies have positive impacts on reducing incident durations while being cost effective. More specifically, the deployment of VMS for diverting traffic in case of an incident results in a benefit cost ratio of 9.2:1; an additional service unit in freeway patrol results in reduced incident detection and verification time with a corresponding benefit-cost ratio of 3.9:1.

Keywords

Express highways; Rutgers Incident Management System; Traffic accidents; Traffic engineering; Variable message signs

Disciplines

Civil Engineering | Controls and Control Theory | Systems and Communications | Transportation | Urban Studies and Planning

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or use interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the article. Publisher copyright policy allows author to archive post-print (author’s final manuscript). When post-print is available or publisher policy changes, the article will be deposited

Publisher Citation

Ozbay, Kaan MA, Weihua Xiao, Gaurav Jaiswal, Bekir Bartin, Pushkin Kachroo, and Melike Baykal-Gursoy. "Evaluation of incident management strategies and technologies using an integrated traffic/incident management simulation." World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research 2, no. 2 (2009): 155-186.

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