Evaluating and Improving Incident Management Using Historical Incident Data: Case Studies at Texas Transportation Management Centers

The companion guidebook (0-5485-P2) developed as part of this study provides the procedures and methodologies for effective use of historical incident data at Texas Transportation Management Centers (TMCs). This research report documents the results from the case studies conducted using the procedures outlined in the guidebook. Researchers examined the data collected from three Texas TMCs, which are Houston’s TranStar, Austin’s Combined Transportation and Emergency Communications Center (CTECC), and Fort Worth’s TransVISION. Researchers conducted six categories of analyses in this study – (a) analysis of incident characteristics, (b) hot spot analysis, (c) incident impact estimation, (d) analysis of incident management performance measures, (e) incident duration prediction, and (f) incident-induced congestion clearance time prediction. Researchers found that historical incident data can be effectively used to support incident management and performance evaluation processes both reactively and proactively. Some procedures need to be automated to be used efficiently in day-to-day operations. As such, various prototype tools, such as the incident duration and incident-induced congestion clearance prediction tools, were developed during this study to facilitate and automate the proposed methodologies. These prototype tools provided a platform for the Texas Department of Transportation to deploy the research results in the future.