1.3 - Manage Incidents DFD

This DFD shows the processes that make up the Manage Incidents facility within the Manage Traffic function. These processes manage the classification of incidents and implement responses when they actually occur.

The key points about the facility are as follows:

Incident inputs available from many sources, e.g. emergency services, event promoters, etc.;
Data from traffic sensors analyzed for indications of possible incidents;
Traffic operations personnel can update incident data with other inputs, e.g. telephone reports;
Incident inputs from construction and maintenance organization must be confirmed;
When an incident occurs, a predefined mitigation strategy is automatically implemented;
Predefined incident strategies can be established in advance by the traffic operations personnel;
Incident status provided as input to the predictive traffic model and to vehicle route selection criteria;
Information on incidents is available to the media.
Provide disaster response and evacuation support in the form of coordination with other traffic management centers, traffic operations personnel, and emergency management.

There are seven processes in this DFD and three are DFDs themselves:
a) Traffic Data Analysis for Incidents (DFD 1.3.1)
b) Review and Manage Incident Data (DFD 1.3.2)
c) Respond to Current Incidents (1.3.3)
d) Provide Operator Interfaces for Incidents (DFD 1.3.4)
e) Manage Incident Response Planning (1.3.5)
f) Traffic Disaster Response Control (1.3.6)
g) Traffic Evacuation Control (1.3.7)

The processes in this DFD and its constituent DFDs divide incidents up into three types comprising possible, predicted, and current data. Those in the possible category require further analysis to establish their status as actual incidents. They may then be either planned events, which are those that have yet to happen, or current incidents, disasters, evacuations, or other emergencies, which are those that are in the process of occurring. Examples of planned events are special events, sports events and maintenance and construction activities, while current incidents can be any event when it actually occurs, traffic accidents, terrorist activity, natural disasters, and incidents caused by the effects of the weather.

Facilities are provided to enable the traffic operations personnel to oversee the management of incidents through the processes in (d). Thus planned events notified by event promoters and the construction and maintenance organization through processes in (b) are subject to confirmation by the traffic operations personnel. This enables these types of incident to be scheduled away from peak travel times. Traffic operations personnel can also amend incident data, and are responsible for setting up defined responses that are implemented when an incident becomes current.

The defined responses used for current incidents can be based on policy data provided by the jurisdictional authorities, responses to previous incidents of the same type, historical data and models, network performance measures, or on network imbalances identified by another process. The process (e) analyzes previous responses to incidents and creates a store of possible responses, which could be added to the library of pre-defined responses. In the event of a disaster, evacuation, or other major emergency processes (f and g) access the pre-defined responses library and act to assist in coordination efforts between traffic management, other traffic management centers, the traffic operations personnel, and emergency management. If a defined response is not available for a particular type of current incident, the traffic operations personnel will be notified and expected to provide one, before any further action is taken.

Although the processes in this DFD and its constituents feed each other data they will operate continuously and independently in order that incidents are detected and acted upon in a timely manner. As a minimum, the current incidents processes in (b) and the process in (c) are needed to provide a very basic incident management system, with no automatic detection, or differentiation between current incidents and planned events.

DFD: 1.3 - Manage Incidents

Parent DFD: 1 - Manage Traffic

Child DFDs:

PSpecs in this DFD: