As emergency management and transportation officials worked to clear the roads and get life in the region back to normal, incident commanders, decision-makers and politicians turned to the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) to integrate and share information from each of the region’s traffic management systems, including transit management systems and traffic-related data from public safety answering points.
“We suck in the data by any and all means possible — electronic, automated means — we fuse it together, and then we resend it out to anyone and everyone who wants to have access to it,” said Michael Pack, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland, where RITIS was developed. “We’ve actually put together a Web site and several visual tools that allow people that don’t have systems of their own, or don’t have the means to reintegrate data into [their] system, to be able to go to our Web sites or use our tools to see what’s going on in the region.”
Some of the tools are Web sites that contain visuals that help personnel understand complex data, while others are more like video games where users can fly around the city with a PlayStation controller and view the roads in 3-D, Pack said.
Data for the displays included feeds from traffic cameras on the roadways, sensors in the roads monitoring the number of cars, how fast they’re going, what kind of vehicles are on the roads, and the salinity of the moisture on the roads.
The data also included information from first responder agencies, including which engine responded to a particular incident, the police officers on scene, when they were dispatched and how long it took them to respond. Some agencies even provided information on what responders did while on scene. “We’re kind of stuck with whatever the agencies themselves are collecting and providing to us,” he said.
More than 600 visitors logged more than 1.2 million hits to RITIS to find and share information. And users included more than just the first responders who use the system on a daily basis. “A lot of it was management and decision-makers,” Pack said. “We even had a few politicians that had access to the system and were able to just get a picture of what was going on and very easily tell who was doing what.”
Field Connection
While RITIS was displayed on screens in traffic management centers across the region, first responders in the field used a mobile application called CapWIN (for Capital Wireless Information Network) to send and receive updates from the field.
CapWIN installs on a mobile data terminal and is used on a day-to-day basis by first responders to support their core operations and facilitate coordination through instant messaging. Using CapWIN, law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services, as well as an increasing number of transportation first responders can see data from sources, including criminal databases for law enforcement and RITIS feeds from transportation centers. Additionally CapWIN allows first responders to update information from incidents created within RITIS and add what they're doing on scene as well as create their own incidents.
“If you need extra assistance, you’ve got like a buddy list within the CapWIN mobile client,” he said. “If you know you always work with this state police trooper who is out there and you could use their assistance, you’re just going to quickly send that person a message and say ‘Hey, I’m going to need some help if you guys can get somebody here to help with this particular issue.’”
During the course of snowmageddon — from noon on Feb. 5, through midnight on Feb. 7 — more than 1,000 CapWIN users shared information on 1,591 incidents and sent 42,683 instant messages requesting help and facilitating coordination.
Pack said RITIS and the first responders’ use of CapWIN is starting to make first responders more aware of the value of collecting and sharing more kinds of information.
“I think some of the cool stuff that is coming out of the use of the system is starting to show the first responders what’s possible, and it’s encouraging them to do a better job of collecting data,” he said. “And it’s showing them the importance of why all of these things are tracked.”
[Photo by David Kidd.]
