Incident response and application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Traffic congestion has been identified as the one of the most serious problems in urban transportation. Not much can be done in finding solutions to recurring congestion problem. As a part of ITS research in the 90's, a lot of research is being focused on non-recurring congestion which is caused primarily by incidents. Incident Response is a part of Incident Management programs but it has not been researched in depth. In this project, an incident response plan has been formulated on paper. A contact information database and a resource allocation database are the part of the plan. The resource allocation database has been created using expert knowledge and statistical analysis on the incident survey conducted in Fairfax County in northern Virginia. This plan is converted to a computer based response plan. It is then implemented using the ARCIINFO GIS software on a Unix Sun Sparc 2000 platform. The response plan is the part of a larger 'Wide Area Incident Management System Software'.