Thursday, 27 July 2017
Austroads has published a report detailing current local and international incident management techniques, and proposing a harmonised incident management framework that supports network operations planning.
The responsibility for implementing traffic incident management (TIM) in Australia and New Zealand primarily lies with road and traffic agencies and private toll operators. Given the complexity of managing multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional responses to road traffic disruptions, and the emergence of Intelligent Transport Systems and other transport technologies, traffic incident management is an evolving area of road transport management.
Austroads member agencies recognised that a nationally agreed incident management framework, based on contemporary leading practices and techniques, could reduce the impact of planned and unplanned incidents, and support the optimisation of network operations. Additionally, the use of a harmonised approach would allow recent developments in network operations planning and safe system to be considered.
In September 2016 Austroads embarked on a project to:
- review the literature on the topic
- identify TIM practices and techniques in use in Australia and New Zealand
- develop an agreed incident management framework.
The literature review highlighted the fact that traffic incident management (TIM) is not only a process of managing multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional response to road traffic incidents, but also a broader management program that involves an objective setup, stakeholder collaboration, option development and selection, implementation and performance evaluation.
Baseline and emerging TIM techniques and practices for the collection of road and traffic data and the response to incident management needs was also reviewed.
New and emerging techniques for traffic incident management identified included:
- smartphones and global navigation satellite systems
- cooperative-ITS and dedicated short range communications
- social media, participatory sensing and crowdsourcing
- drones for traffic data and incident management.
The primary goal of the TIM framework is to present the many aspects of incident management in a systematic and harmonised manner.
The framework, underpinned by seven agreed principles, provides road network managers and incident management service providers with an overarching guidance and a common understanding of the on-going processes for integrating traffic incident management approaches. It incorporates contemporary leading-edge incident management techniques that can be employed to provide a quick, effective and coordinated incident response process to safely return normal traffic flow.
It is anticipated that the implementation of the framework will enhance the operation and safety of the road network.
Report Link: Techniques for Incident Management to Support Network Operations Planning