Creation of crash-countermeasure police patrol routes targeting hotspot road segments

This dissertation addresses the problem of expressing, executing, evaluating, and engaging patrol routing algorithms that target event hotspots on roadways. An "event hotspot" is a location that is over-represented in some event occurrence, such as crashes, citations or any other event of interest. Recommended patrol routes can be used by organizations such as police agencies, emergency medical responders, and taxi services who patrol roadway segments at proper times to assist or deter their target events. Patrol routing algorithms are used to specify the movements of simulated mobile agents on a roadway system. The patrol algorithms are first expressed using TURN, Technique for Ultimate Route Navigation, our extensible domain specific language (DSL) created for this purpose. Algorithms specified using TURN syntax are then executed and evaluated in a custom simulation environment. Patrol routing algorithms deemed fit for a specific context are then engaged by users via a web-based geographic information systems (GIS) portal. In this dissertation, details of the patrol routing model are followed by two case studies. The first case study evaluates agent response times to events when dispatched from region-based staging points. The second case study evaluates several nondeterministic highway patrol routing algorithms according to four metrics: response times, network coverage, hotspot coverage, and hotspot exposure. The case study results demonstrate the applicability of the patrol routing system.