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

  • Engineers and inventors of the future at World Congress
    October 12, 2016
    Tomorrow’s engineers, inventors and transport system planners showed their ideas, visions and solutions for dealing with current and future transport challenges to delegates at this week’s ITS World Congress. Displays outside the main exhibition area included the Young Students Design Your Future Challenge, and the Victorian Model Solar Vehicle Challenge, with students from local primary and secondary schools working with Museum Victoria’s Scienceworks to present their ideas. Jonathan Shearer, Scienceworks’
    Read More
  • USDOT launches Smart City Challenge
    December 9, 2015
    The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) has partnered with Vulcan in the Smart City challenge to mayors and city leaders across America to integrate emerging technology into their transportation networks. The winning city will be awarded up to US$40 million from the US DOT (funding subject to future appropriations) to implement bold, data-driven ideas by making transportation safer, easier, and more reliable. In addition, Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan has announced its intention to award up to US$10 millio
    Read More
  • IBTTA: ‘The only way to keep up is to stay ahead’
    March 4, 2019
    The focus of the IBTTA’s Annual Technology Summit is changing. The tolling organisation’s Bill Cramer explains why this is good news for ITS professionals looking to embrace new technologies For a decade or more, the technology summits hosted by the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) have helped drive the tolling industry’s embrace of the systems, services and breakthrough concepts that are building a 21st century transportation sector. Now, the summit itself is adjusting its
    Read More
  • Multi-modal’s long road into the transportation mainstream
    June 4, 2015
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at 20 years of multimodal transport in the Sun Belt and beyond and the key requirement for user engagement. Phoenix residents will head to the polls in August to decide whether to implement a three-tenths of a cent sales tax to fund the city’s new multimodal transportation plan. It will be the second transportation-related sales tax hike in the past 15 years yet city officials and advocates expect the resolution to easily pass—despite the strong anti-tax environment that has dom
    Read More

Highlighted Content