Skip to main content

Emergency response day kicks off at ITS America in Pittsburgh

Don’t forget to make some time for Emergency Response Day 2015 tomorrow--an annual event at the ITS America Annual Meeting and Expo since 2011. Conference attendees will have the ability to engage with emergency responders as they act out a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) scenario, complete with a planning meeting, training, a staged incident and after-action review. Local first responders will participate, including firefighters, police, tow vehicles and traffic management engineers from Allegheny County
June 1, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Don’t forget to make some time for Emergency Response Day 2015 tomorrow--an annual event at the ITS America Annual Meeting and Expo since 2011. Conference attendees will have the ability to engage with emergency responders as they act out a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) scenario, complete with a planning meeting, training, a staged incident and after-action review. Local first responders will participate, including firefighters, police, tow vehicles and traffic management engineers from Allegheny County.

A hack-a-thon will also be held in the afternoon. Conference attendees, first responders and participants from local universities will work together to develop application ideas to solve major data, communications and safety issues in the world of TIM and emergency response. The winning application will be invited to the Emergency Response Symposium in September held by ITS New York and the Transportation Safety Advancement Group to present their application to industry leaders.

“We really want to get ITS technology companies to think about emergency response and how they can make first responders’ jobs easier,” said Doug Smith, director of transportation planning for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. “It’s a great opportunity to get these two groups together to come up with solutions for safety and traffic management.”

The day will start at 9:30 am in room 336 (upstairs from the exhibit hall) with a welcome address and an overview of the day’s events. Emergency responders will then demonstrate the lifecycle of the TIM process from planning to debriefing with a focus on where data and new applications could assist first responders. Teams will be formed via speed dating format, and the Data Jam, essentially a hack-a-thon, will begin after lunch. The winning application will be announced at 4:30 pm.

Emergency Response Day 2015 is sponsored by Transportation Safety Advancement Group (TSAG) and the Motorola Solutions Foundation. The event is free for conference attendees, students and emergency responders in uniform.

Related Content

  • Slow moving US road user charging programme
    July 18, 2012
    Bern Grush recently attended the Mileage-Based User Fee Conference in Austin Texas where the fledgling American landscape for Road User Charging is beginning to take shape. When I was a kid I liked to poke sticks into the ants' nests in sidewalk cracks. Ants would scatter in every conceivable direction. They ran in circles, they ran over and through each other. They screamed without logic. I was fascinated.
  • IBTTA kicks off second Global Road Safety Week
    June 23, 2025
    Be Safe Together: Be the Highway Hero is theme of this year's campaign
  • Transmax trials emergency vehicle ‘green wave’
    December 6, 2013
    Existing equipment used in Australian emergency vehicle ‘green wave’ trial. Despite the lights and sirens, accidents between the motoring public and emergency vehicles on their way to/from the scene of an incident are relatively frequent. Figures from various sources indicate that road accidents are the second most frequent cause of death for on-duty fire fighter fatalities and that more than 90% of ambulance and fire engine accidents occur when the lights are on and the sirens wailing. Other studies indica
  • Stage is set for ITS America Annual Meeting
    May 18, 2012
    ITS America has announced that on Monday it will hold a key discussion event concerning intelligent transportation and its role in helping to solve America’s infrastructure crisis with national leaders including Ursula Burns, chairman and CEO of Xerox; Chris Vein, deputy White House chief technology officer; Robert Brown, Ford Motor Company’s VP of sustainability, environment and safety engineering; and Martin Thall, Verizon’s VP - telematics. This is just one of numerous sessions examining ways to bring in