California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

This is the final report for the project Incident Management:Process Analysis and Improvement.The report summarizes findings from three earlier working papers (1998-31,2000-14 and 2000-15)completed under this project, and provides additional analysis on specific scenarios. This study highlights the importance of the following principles: 1)Response units should be adequate in number to handle anticipated demand. 2)Response units should be strategically located to minimize maximum response times. 3)Especially during busy periods,response units should not be dispatched over long distances.It is better to wait for a closer unit to become available than to waste capacity on overly long response distances. 4)Because response units are frequently mobile,and because response units are frequently busy responding to other incidents,it would be very beneficial for dispatchers to have access to location data.