A GIS with traffic simulation engine for incident management applications

Abstract

This study presents a novel approach to response units dispatching in real time with a view of optimizing the process of multiple incident response management, namely minimizing the total response travel time of all the response units. The TransCAD geographic information system (GIS) has been applied to incorporate an optimization model for response units dispatching, conduct data processing, and visualize the results. To test the proposed dispatching model, a microscopic traffic simulation tool named PARAMICS was used to simulate incidents in a network, gather link travel times at regular intervals and transmit this time dependent information to TransCAD for dispatching optimization. The results show that a GIS furnished with real time traffic information offers a powerful platform for intelligent incident response dispatching. Besides, a heuristic UE (User Equilibrium) a?? SO (System Optimal) based traffic diversion approach is proposed in this research to derive diversion plans for route travelers when incidents occur. This approach is tested through two simulated experiments on the TransCAD platform and verified to be quite effective.