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

  • Sharing data creates value - IRF Geneva
    December 21, 2021
    A report on the sharing of data to improve mobility has come up with a policy framework for the industry. Susanna Zammataro, director general of the International Road Federation in Geneva, explains to Adam Hill why this can empower companies and organisations
  • Open data gives new lease of life to public travel information screens
    March 4, 2014
    David Crawford finds resurgent interest in travel information screens for buildings. With city governments worldwide increasingly opening up and sharing their public transport data for general use, attention is focusing on the potential financial benefits – to transit operators and businesses more widely. Professor Stephen Goldsmith, who directs the US’ Harvard University’s Data-Smart City Solutions Project says: “Amid nationwide public-sector budget cuts, open data is providing a road map for improving tra
  • Predicting and solving future transport problems?
    August 10, 2012
    Can the future be predicted? With what accuracy can ‘predictive analytics’ be used to help anticipate demand? This is a relatively new science for transportation and over the next few years it will be interesting to see to what extent it can solve some common problems. Transportation authorities may be close to finding the golden chalice that is accurate prediction of how traffic will behave as congestion occurs. Predictive algorithms are not necessarily new, but the coming together of conditions needed for
  • FHWA collaborative framework on automated driving systems: an explainer
    September 26, 2023
    USDoT FHWA has put together a collaborative framework to help secure the roll-out of automated driving systems in the US. John Harding of FHWA explains the thinking…