Development of a decision support framework for deployment of incident management systems

Incidents on freeways are major problems in all urban areas. Freeway incidents cause non-recurring traffic congestion, which has several different negative impacts. One method for managing incidents and the non-recurring congestion that results, is implementation of an incident management system. Implementation of such a system requires the determination of the system scope and demonstration of benefits. A decision support framework is developed to provide input into defining an appropriate system scope, refine existing systems and demonstrate the benefits of incident management.; This research develops and applies a decision support framework that can be used to assist decision-makers in assessing the cost-effectiveness of proposed incident management systems. The framework provides a prototype for a tool that affords decision-makers the ability to efficiently evaluate incident management scenarios under consideration. The scenarios under consideration can be an initial incident management system implementation or an enhancement of an existing system. The framework provides a benefit-cost comparison for scenarios being evaluated, which can be used to select a preferred scenario or as indirect feedback into modifying a scenario. The decision support framework uses a model previously developed for the Federal Highway Administration to predict delay caused by non-recurring traffic congestion based on freeway section characteristics. Protocols were developed to calibrate this delay prediction model to reflect local incident rates, incident duration parameters and hourly traffic demand distributions.; This research also applied the framework to a case study of the Nashville area. The case study included four scenarios that were evaluated using the framework. The effects of calibration for local parameters were assessed and sensitivity analysis was performed using the framework. The case study demonstrated the value of the framework in providing decision-makers with information for use in designing or refining incident management systems.