A real-time decision support system for roadway network incident response logistics

Incident-related congestion is a serious problem of great concern for most metropolitan traffic management authorities. The high economic and social impact associated with the incident-related congestion has prompted Traffic Management Agencies world-wide to develop incident management systems (IMS). Incident response logistics (IRL) encompass all actions needed for the effective deployment of incident response resources and constitute an essential component of any IMS. The incident management decision making environment suggests that decision support systems (DSSs) can be used in order to improve the quality of the decisions and expedite the decision making process of the IRL. The objective of this paper is to develop a DSS for supporting real-time decisions related to IRL. The development of the proposed DSS is based on an extensive user-requirements survey in six European countries and integrates mathematical models, rules and algorithms in a user friendly environment in order to minimise incident response time. The proposed DSS provides the following functionalities: (i) districting, (ii) dispatching of response units (RUs), (iii) routing of the RUs, and (iv) on-scene management and it has been demonstrated successfully under real life conditions and accepted as a useful decision making tool by its users.