INFORMATION SHARING FOR TRAFFIC INCIDENT MANAGEMENT
Institutional Arrangement and Agreements
Memoranda of Understanding/Agreement (MOU/MOA) provide the framework for incident operations and define responder roles and responsibilities. This framework helps to keep everyone involved in incident response clear and informed, especially when a response plan grows in complexity or is influenced by external factors. TIM becomes a cooperative and collaborative effort between multiple agencies and entities with a solid foundation of trust. Participants in the process know and understand their roles and responsibilities. A sample agreement between parties is Florida’s Open Roads Policy, 18 signed by FDOT and FHP, in which the parties commit to quickly restoring the safe, orderly flow of traffic following an incident; an excerpt is shown below in Figure 7.
Figure 7. State of Florida’s Open Roads Policy 18
Mutual aid agreements, common between fire and emergency medical responders, permit incident responders to provide emergency assistance to each other in the event of disasters or emergencies. 19 Similar types of agreements can be used to allow other governmental agencies to provide incident management functions outside their own jurisdictions.
