TECHNIQUES FOR REDUCING TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT CENTER CAMERA POSITIONING LATENCY FOR ACCELERATED INCIDENT RESPONSE

Traffic Incident Management (TIM) is an important tool for agencies to reduce secondary crashes, improve travel reliability, and ensure safety of first responders. Having “eyes” on the scene from roadside traffic cameras can assist operators to dispatch appropriate personnel, provide situational awareness, and allow for quick response when incident conditions change. Many intelligent traffic systems (ITS) centers deploy pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras that provide broad coverage but require operators to position. When incidents occur or a public safety vehicle stops for roadside assistance, Traffic Management Center (TMC) operators need to reposition cameras to monitor the event. The camera positioning time depends on operator experience, accuracy of 911 call, location, public safety radio reports, and in some cases, GPS positions. This research outlines the methodology to use GPS data sources to automate camera position to a scene for event nature verification. In general, this GPS information can come from either connected vehicles or public safety vehicles, such as Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) Hoosier Helpers. Implementing this research into INDOT daily operations has increased the number of events that cameras verify, while decreasing the time from event occurrence to camera verification from a median of 5 minutes to a median of approximately 90 seconds. The time is driven by the accuracy and frequency of GPS data from devices. With increased telematics polling rates and availability of enhanced vehicle data such as door open/close and seatbelt latch events, this latency is expected to further decline.