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21st Century Operations Using 21st Century Technologies

TRAFFIC INCIDENT MANAGEMENT RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

2.0 THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH IN TIM OPERATIONS

In an effort to distinguish the multidisciplinary approach traditionally applied to traffic incident management (TIM) operations from that which is applied and/or envisioned for TIM resource management, and to demonstrate the impetus for applying this approach to TIM resource management, based on observed benefits in TIM operations, this chapter briefly overviews the:

  • Respective roles of TIM participants, including potential points of conflict;
  • Broad-based, alternative operational procedures under a multidisciplinary approach;
  • Manifestation of this approach in practice through multidisciplinary training opportunities; and
  • Reported benefits resulting from a multidisciplinary approach in TIM operations.

TIM Participants and Respective Roles

Key participants in TIM typically include:

  • Law enforcement,
  • Fire and rescue,
  • Emergency medical services,
  • Transportation, and
  • Towing and recovery.

The operational roles and responsibilities for each of these TIM participants are described as follows.

Law Enforcement

Law enforcement agencies exist at the state, county, and local levels with widely varying jurisdictions. Typically, state police have jurisdiction on state highways and county and municipal police have jurisdiction off the state highway system. On-scene at a traffic incident, the duties of law enforcement personnel include:

  • Securing the incident scene,
  • Providing emergency medical aid until help arrives,
  • Safeguarding personal property,
  • Conducting accident investigations,
  • Serving as incident commander,
  • Supervising scene clearance,
  • Assisting disabled motorists, and
  • Directing traffic 1

Law enforcement agencies are first responders at traffic incident scenes, providing 24-hour emergency response. Law enforcement officers typically act alone and are trained to make unilateral decisions.1

Lengthy law enforcement investigation duties sometimes conflict with the objective of quickly restoring traffic flow under a multidisciplinary TIM approach. In some areas, police officers are evaluated on the basis of the completeness and accuracy of their incident investigations; insurance companies and lawyers for both the defense and prosecution in criminal cases, and for plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases, scrutinize police reports extremely carefully. Technological advances in investigation, including total station surveying equipment and electronic documentation, help police complete their investigations more quickly.2

Fire and Rescue

Fire and rescue services are provided by county and municipal fire departments, and by surrounding fire departments through mutual aid agreements. In most large urban areas, full-time professional personnel staff fire and rescue departments. In many suburban, and in most rural areas, volunteers primarily provide fire and rescue services. Typical roles and responsibilities assumed by fire and rescue personnel at traffic incidents include:

  • Protecting the incident scene,
  • Suppressing fires,
  • Providing emergency medical care,
  • Serving as incident commander,
  • Providing initial hazardous materials (HAZMAT) response and containment,
  • Rescuing crash victims from contaminated environments,
  • Rescuing crash victims from wrecked vehicles,
  • Arranging transportation for the injured,
  • Assisting in incident clearance, and
  • Providing traffic control until law enforcement or transportation agency personnel arrival.1

Fire and rescue agencies also operate as first responders, providing 24-hour emergency response. Unlike law enforcement—who operate individually for most duties—fire personnel may not respond individually to requests from other response agencies unless their commanding officer directs them to do so (Federal Highway Administration [FHWA] 2006). In addition, fire personnel, with the intent of protecting the incident scene, may use fire equipment which can unnecessarily block traffic lanes.

Emergency Medical Services

Emergency medical service (EMS) agencies are responsible for the triage, treatment, and transport of crash victims. In many areas, fire and rescue agencies provide emergency medical services. In some areas, other agencies or private companies provide these services to local jurisdictions under contract. EMS personnel are limited in the functions that they can perform at an incident scene by the level of training that they have received. Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics are both trained to provide basic life support; paramedics are trained at a higher level and can perform specialized procedures, such as starting Intravenous treatments (IVs) and administering emergency medications. Typical roles and responsibilities assumed by EMS personnel at traffic incidents include:

  • Providing advanced emergency medical care,
  • Determining the destination and transportation requirements for the injured,
  • Coordinating evacuation with fire, law, and ambulance or airlift personnel,
  • Serving as incident commander for medical emergencies,
  • Determining the approximate cause of injuries for the trauma center, and
  • Removing medical waste from the incident scene.1

In some instances, EMS personnel are qualified to pronounce death, allowing them to move the decedent to a safe place out of traffic to await the coroner’s arrival on the scene.

Transportation

Transportation agencies are typically responsible for restoring the flow of traffic as quickly and safely as possible following the occurrence of an incident. Typically, these agencies are involved in the development, implementation, and operation of traffic operations or management centers (TOC or TMC) as well as management of service patrols. Typical operational responsibilities assumed by transportation agencies include:

  • Assisting in incident detection and verification,
  • Initiating traffic management strategies on incident impacted facilities,
  • Protecting the incident scene,
  • Initiating emergency medical assistance until help arrives,
  • Providing traffic control,
  • Assisting motorist with disabled vehicles,
  • Providing motorist information,
  • Providing sand to absorb small fuel and anti-freeze spills,
  • Providing special equipment clearing incident scenes,
  • Determining incident clearance and roadway repair needs,
  • Establishing and operating alternate routes,
  • Coordinating clearance and repair resources,
  • Serving as incident commander for clearance and repair functions, and
  • Repairing transportation infrastructure.1

Transportation agencies are secondary responders; typically called to the incident scene by first responders, usually law enforcement. Transportation agencies are rarely connected directly to public safety emergency communications and dispatch systems and not all operate 24 hours-a-day resulting in sometimes lengthy after-hours response.

Towing and Recovery

Compared to other TIM participants, towing and recovery service providers are unique because they are not public agencies; they must remain profitable to retain a skilled work force and purchase and maintain expensive and complex equipment. Their typical responsibilities at the scene of an incident include:

  • Recovering and removing vehicles from incident scene,
  • Protecting victims' property and vehicles,
  • Removing debris from the roadway, and
  • Providing other services, such as traffic control, as directed or under contract.1

Towing and recovery companies are secondary responders; typically operating under a rotation or contract towing arrangement maintained by a law enforcement agency. In rotation towing, a list of pre-qualified companies, classified by capabilities and/or zones, is developed and used to dispatch towing and recovery services. If not adequately defined, rotation towing may result in lengthy response times and inappropriate equipment dispatched to the incident scene. In contract towing, companies are selected through a bidding process; qualification requirements to bid may be more rigid than requirements for placement on a rotation list. Contracts may also be awarded on a zone basis to help enable response by the closest qualified company.1

Commonalities

Although the roles and priorities of the various agencies that respond to incidents are largely distinct, the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition’s (NTIMC) Training Task Force has identified essential TIM functions that can be commonly performed by various agency personnel in their Multidisciplinary Core Competencies document. For example, the NTIMC recommends that all responders, regardless of discipline, be trained to:

  • Position vehicles to support scene safety and expeditious exit of EMS vehicles,
  • Establish temporary traffic control,
  • Provide basic first aid to victims until EMS arrives, and
  • Assume Incident Command until replaced.

The NTIMC recommends cooperative roles for law enforcement and transportation personnel when establishing advanced traffic control and detour routes, with fire and rescue personnel providing assistance as needed. Similarly, law enforcement personnel are primarily tasked with vehicle and debris removal, but transportation and fire and rescue personnel are urged to take an assistive role. Both fire and rescue and transportation personnel are presumed qualified to competently perform functions associated with the clean-up of minor spills. These commonalities in TIM functional competencies readily support opportunities for enhanced resource management efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Multidisciplinary TIM Operations

The respective roles and responsibilities of the TIM participants are carried out through various formal and informal operational strategies or procedures. Traditional operations have been, and continue to be, supplanted by managed operations carried out under a multidisciplinary approach. The two types of operations are compared and contrasted below.

Traditional Operations

Traditional incident operations are characterized by sequential steps, largely performed independently. Law enforcement personnel may do very little, if any, investigation while fire and emergency medical personnel are on the scene. If a fatality is involved, law enforcement personnel may allow the coroner to perform their medical investigation first, and subsequently perform their own criminal investigation. Tow trucks may not be requested until well into the incident (i.e., after law enforcement performs essential duties at the scene), resulting in lost time waiting for resources to arrive. Similarly, requests for sand or road or structure damage assessments by transportation agency personnel may not occur until well after the incident has occurred.2

Sequential approaches to incident operations typically result from a minimal understanding of others' roles. Historically, it has been quite common for personnel in one agency to have little knowledge of the abilities, resources, and procedures of another agency. Although law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency medical, transportation, and towing personnel are usually well trained and professional; working together is complicated by the fact that actions are governed by individual agency priorities. Fire agency personnel often close lanes in excess of the blockage to protect incident responders. Law enforcement agencies may declare a fatal incident a "crime scene" and close the freeway to protect the integrity of the investigation. Although there is validity in both of these actions, both ignore the sense of urgency to keep traffic moving for safety reasons.2

Multidisciplinary Operations

Multidisciplinary operations are based on an understanding of each others' roles; the more closely agencies work together, the more they discover how they can mutually and concurrently accomplish their objectives as they respond to incidents.

Multidisciplinary operations are, thus, characterized by concurrent steps. Through interagency understanding and close cooperation, incident investigation (even for fatalities) can proceed while the injured are being removed and while tow agencies are assessing how to remove a vehicle or even attaching rigging. The extent of concurrent operations must, of course, be governed by safety considerations.2

Unified Command (UC), a concept basic to the Incident Command System (ICS), facilitates decision making under multidisciplinary TIM operations. Under UC, a single point of contact is responsible for the overall handling of the incident; decisions regarding specific actions needed by responding agencies are made through consultation with supervisors from other responding agencies. Such "management by committee" can only be effective if there is a high degree of professional trust among the responding agencies.2

This professional trust also supports the sharing of equipment and personnel. For example, law enforcement and transportation agencies can share equipment and personnel when performing traffic control; law enforcement agencies may equip on-scene transportation agency personnel with hand-held radios to facilitate communications. Agencies can also share funding sources to purchase equipment to support traffic incident management; transportation agencies, for example, may purchase total station surveying equipment to speed law enforcement personnel’s investigation duties and reduce overall incident duration. 2 Examples such as this directly support the premise of this investigation related to opportunities for enhanced resource management efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Multidisciplinary TIM Training

A number of awareness level and hands-on, operational level training opportunities have been developed in an effort to fully implement multidisciplinary TIM operations into practice. Examples include the following:

  • National Highway Institute’s (NHI) Incident Management Course Suite 3 provides awareness level training for personnel from law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency communications, transportation, towing and recovery, traffic reporting media, and other agencies or companies involved in responding to unplanned traffic incidents or planning special events and comprises the following three courses that may be taken in succession or individually:
    • Managing Traffic Incident and Roadway Emergencies (FHWA-NHI-133048A addresses institutional and technical aspects of resolving traffic incidents and roadway emergencies safely and efficiently;
    • Managing Travel for Planned Special Events (FHWA-NHI-133099) guides practitioners through all phases of managing travel for planned events using a local event scenario; and
    • Using the Incident Command System (ICS) at Highway Incidents (FHWA-NHI-133101) presents an overview of ICS, its structure, and how it expands and contracts to meet the demands of an incident while maintaining a manageable span of control for people managing resources on-scene.
  • I-95 Corridor Coalition's Quick Clearance Toolkit 4 is designed for use by multiple disciplines, including law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency communications, transportation, towing and recovery, traffic reporting media, and other agencies or companies and provides policy makers and TIM practitioners with handy and ready-to-use tools (i.e., presentations, videos, and incident management scenarios and supporting information such as sample policies, laws, memoranda of understanding [MOU], or incident management plans) to assist them in providing more effective TIM practices with a primary emphasis on quick clearance.
  • Incident Commander 5 sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, is a PC-based software simulation that allows players to fill the role of Incident Commander and control various agencies (i.e., law enforcement, fire and rescue, EMS, and transportation) when responding to realistic incident scenarios that incorporate time delays and resource limitations.
  • Currently under development by the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT) Lab, in partnership with the I-95 Corridor Coalition and Forterra Systems Inc., the Virtual Incident Management Training 6 program is designed to educate and validate incident management techniques and quick clearance practices and promote communications, coordination, and cooperation using practical, interactive incident scenarios for up to 500 responders representing law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency communications, transportation, towing and recovery, traffic reporting media, and other agencies or companies simultaneously at a variety of locations across the I-95 Corridor.

In addition to these more established multidisciplinary training examples, a number of jurisdictions facilitate training in multidisciplinary TIM operations through table-top incident scenario exercises or full-scale mock incidents.

The commonality in each case is the focus on multidisciplinary participation in the training at both the awareness and hands-on, operational levels. The NTIMC’s Multidisciplinary Core Competencies document 7, mentioned previously, supports these and other multidisciplinary training efforts by providing a common framework and list of core competencies that all TIM responders need to work together efficiently and effectively at traffic incident scenes. Continued awareness and cooperation among TIM responders at the operational level will facilitate the transfer of the multidisciplinary approach to TIM resource management. As TIM responders become more aware of each other’s capabilities, resources, and priorities, opportunities for enhanced resource management efficiency and cost effectiveness can be more readily identified.

Resulting Benefits

Demonstrating the impetus for applying a similar approach to TIM resource management, the multidisciplinary approach in TIM operations has resulted in substantial and wide-ranging benefits.

The benefits of multidisciplinary TIM operations are most often tied to a reduction in overall incident duration and reported in monetary terms as a reduction in motorist delay, fuel consumption, harmful emissions, and/or secondary incidents involving either other motorists or response personnel. To demonstrate the magnitude of benefits realized, Atlanta, Georgia reported a reduction in:

  • Average incident durations from 67 to 21 minutes;
  • Vehicle-hours of delay of 7.25 million over one year with an annual cost savings of $152,053,180 (2003 dollars);
  • Gasoline and diesel consumption of 5.17 million gallons and 1.66 million gallons, respectively, with a related annual cost savings of $10,365,969 (2003 dollars);
  • Harmful emissions of 2,457 tons, 186 tons, and 186 tons of CO, HC, and NOx, respectively, with related annual cost savings of $1,247,985, $15,626,587, and $3,368,436 (2003 dollars); and
  • Secondary crashes of 69 percent (from 676 to 210 in one year) and a related annual cost savings of $1,611,054 (2003 dollars).8

Similar benefits were reported previously in Maryland. In 2002, Maryland reported a reduction in:

  • Average incident duration of 28.6 percent;
  • vehicle-hours of delay of approximately 30 million;
  • Fuel consumption of approximately 5 million gallons of fuel; and
  • Secondary crashes by 377 incidents.9

The magnitude of these benefits, in economic terms, is high. Delay, fuel consumption, and harmful emission impacts are derived from per vehicle estimates of occupancy, wages, fuel efficiency, and emissions output applied to overall traffic volume estimates. In urban areas and along high-traffic routes, a sizeable volume of traffic may be impacted by a single incident. Extrapolated for the period of one year, the economic impacts of reducing incident duration by just a few minutes become significant.

The application of the multidisciplinary approach to TIM resource management may also contribute to these same areas of benefit by enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of TIM operations. Instead, however, this document focuses on the more tangible benefits attributable to the most efficient and effective use of resources across all responding agencies in combination and incurred directly by public agencies. Economic savings are anticipated attributable to:

  1. The utilization of personnel who are best qualified (i.e., capable but not over-qualified) for the various tasks (this, in turn, allows alternately skilled personnel to focus on other incident management functions),
  2. The utilization of appropriate technology capable of supporting various on-site resource tasks,
  3. The utilization of appropriate equipment by function (i.e., use of the least costly equipment capable of performing the function), and
  4. A reduction in the overall resources required through reduced redundancy across disciplines.