The usefulness of net-centric support tools for traffic incident management

In the last two decades traffic Incident Management (IM) has become an important tool to reduce and prevent congestion on the road network, especially in urban areas. IM involves the coordinated interactions of many public and private actors. To support their tasks in an effective way, information systems are becoming increasingly important. In particular, information and system quality and Situational Awareness (SA) have been identified as major hurdles for effective emergency response. This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of net-centric information systems to improve the cooperation between public and private IM organizations. A set of controlled experiments were conducted with 16 participants. Data on the responses of the participants were collected through questionnaires and observer notes. The analysis focused on: a comparison of the tools tested, in terms of the appreciation of information and system quality, a comparison of the communication and coordination of a test group and a control group of the emergency workers; the value of SA in the performance of the decision-making process; and, how scenario complexity can affect the design principles of net-centric systems.