Application of GIS in highway emergency response
Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Highway systems are considered as critical infrastructure, in particular because a disruption in one of the components can result in significant impacts on the economic and social well-being of a region or nation. Highway emergencies, such as a bridge collapse, flooding, or other major incident, may cause widespread and extended network disruptions while posing challenges for first responders and the transportation agency responsible for response and congestion mitigation. Since first responders function in a complex travel environment with deficient information, this research applied GIS technologies to improve situational awareness for first responders. The focus is on enhancing police officers’ response in the event of a highway emergency closure. Through a literature review, research gaps—such as lack of studies in improving situational awareness in highway emergency response―are identified. Further research highlights the importance of presenting real-time traffic information to support situational awareness, rather than post-event analysis. To fill these gaps, advanced WebGIS technologies are used to conceptualize and prototype an application to process real-time data from various resources and provide useful information for first responders. This research identified the features and GIS-based information needs in highway emergency response through qualitative interviews. To address these needs, a conceptual design of a prototype GIS app was developed to provide four categories of GIS functions: capturing information, navigational assistance, operational planning, and monitoring. Moreover, the research demonstrated the applications of the prototype GIS app based on real cases of highway emergencies to verify functionality, usefulness, and constraints. Besides evaluating the information quality of the prototype GIS app, this research also conducted follow-up interviews and questionnaires based on the Situational Awareness Rating Technique to measure the improvement of situational awareness. First responders approved the prototype and the evaluations suggested significant improvements in situational awareness. Ultimately, the research makes several contributions, including the integration of GIS technologies and improved access to useful information in highway emergency response. Based on the framework used to develop the GIS application to improve situational awareness in highway emergency response, some suggestions for further research are also proposed to improve related functions of the application in the future.
Description
Keywords
Applied sciences, Social sciences, Earth sciences, Geographic information system, Highway emergency response, Law enforcement, Situational awareness