AN OVERVIEW OF INCIDENT MANAGEMENT PROJECTS IN THE NETHERLANDS Peter Zwaneveld, Isabel Wilmink TNO Inro Ben Immers TNO Inro and K.U. Leuven, Department of Civil Engineering Emst Malipaard Grontmij Dick Heyse Rijkswaterstaat, Projectbureau Incident Management I. INTRODUCTION Over the past years the Dutch government has implemented Incident Management (IM) projects on several locations on the Dutch motorway network. Incident Management projects aim among others to reduce the delay caused by incidents. These incidents can involve, for instance, accidents, stalled vehicles and spilled loads. This paper provides an overview of the activities with respect to IM in the Netherlands over the past decade. The discussion of these activities is based upon the following four stages. These stages are identified for presentational and educational purposes. Chronologically, the stages overlap. 1. The ‘orientation’ stage. This stage started at the end of the 1980’s with an orientation on international IM activities. It ended in 1995 with the publication of an Incident Management Manual by the Dutch Ministry of Traffic and Transportation. 2. The ‘pilot projects’ stage. This stage started in 1994 and ended in 1997. Within this stage several IM measures were tested on motorways around Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. 3. The ‘organisation’ stage. This stage started during the previous stage and ended in January 1997 with the foundation of an organisation, called ‘Projectbureau Incident Management’. Several emergency services are represented within this organisation, like police, transport authorities, motorway operators and insurance companies. 4. The ‘implementation’ stage. This stage, started in 1997, consists of the nation- wide introduction of IM measures. Initially, two measures are selected, one for passenger cars and one for trucks. Each stage is described in a separate section. The projects described in this paper were performed over the last years by several individuals and companies. The reader is referred to the references for a list of projects and involved companies. The study to provide this overview of IM activities and to assess possible future activities was conducted as part of the ‘Program Incident 289 Management’ by TNO Inro from January 1997 until March 1998. This project was supervised by Rijkswaterstaat, Projectbureau Incident Management. This paper is organised as follows. First, a general overview of IM is presented. This overview includes a definition of IM,a modelling of the incident handling process, and the main effects of IM measures. Subsequently, IM activities in each stage are described. Finally, future steps and conclusions with respect to IM activities in the Netherlands are presented. 2. INCIDENT MANAGEMENT: DEFINITION, MODELING AND EFFECTS 2.1 Definition Incident Management (IM) is the total package of measures geared to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall process of handling of incidents. This includes optimisation of traffic safety situations at the incident location, rapid and efficient handling of incidents, and, subsequently, minimisation of traffic delays for other road users. Given the complex nature of incident handling, the amount of possible measures to improve the overall handling of incidents is enormous. 2.2 Modelling The handling of an incident can be described based upon the duration of an incident. This serves to show where problems arise in the clearing of incidents and is useful for determining what measures are needed. The duration is defined as the period of time in which traffic flow is disrupted due to an incident. The following phases (or time periods) are identified: Phase 1: detection time (Tl); the time elapsed between the occurrence and the detection of the incident; Phase 2 warning time (T2); the time required to alert all necessary emergency services; Phase 3: arrival or driving time (T3); the length of time required by the emergency service alerted to reach the location of the incident; Phase 4: operation or action time (T4); the length of time required to move ‘damaged’ vehicles onto the hard shoulder. Lanes are freed for normal traffic use; Phase 5 : normalisation time (T5); the time required to take the damaged vehicles from the hard shoulder to a location out of sight of road users; Phase 6: flow recovery time (T6); the time elapsed between the moment that the incident has been fully removed and the disappearance of the tailback. Figure 1 is a graphical illustration of these different time phases of the handling of an incident. Examples of possible measures to improve incident handling are (including relevant phase): advanced traffic monitoring systems to identify incidents (phase 1); centrally located tow truck stand-by (phase 3); infrastructure such as tow-away sites or ‘safe havens’ for stranded or crashed vehicles, see Figure 2 for an illustration (phase 6); 290 An overview of IM measures and an assessment of these measures can be found in Koehne et al. (1991) and Zwaneveld et al. (1998). 2.3 Effects and efforts IM measures may have effects in different phases of the incident handling process. These effects can be regarded as objectives of JM measures. The following effects are identified 1) safety of emergency service personnel; 2) safety of (injured) people involved in the incident (quality of aid); 3) safety of other road users; 4) speed (duration) of assistance; 5) consequences for legal matters (question of guilt); 5) informing general public. IM measures can involve efforts in the following areas: a) organisational; b) technical; c) communicative; d) legal. In general, IM measures may have several effects and can require efforts in more than one category. The next paragraph describes the four stages of the IM activities in the Netherlands. 3. THE ‘ORIENTATION’ STAGE The ‘orientation’ stage started at the end of the 1980s. Among the first activities was an orientation on IM activities in the U.S.A and other countries. The initiative to start these actions came from the fact that not only the total number of queues increased, but also the portion of queues caused by incidents. At present, about 20% of all queues are caused by incidents. In 1989, a project-group was formed to investigate the possibilities to apply IM in the Netherlands. Based upon quick scan results obtained in the U.S.A, it became clear that IM is a relatively cheap way to reduce congestion on the roads. The project-group identified several promising measures which were assessed with respect to costs and benefits with the use of the previously mentioned subdivision in phases (see Figure 1) and a simulation model. Furthermore, the ultimate goal of IM activities was determined. The goal was to reduce incident related time losses due to congestion from the present share of 20% to 10%. Thus, generally speaking, IM measures have to cut congestion caused by incidents by half. This stage ended in January 1995 with the publication of a ‘Manual Incident Management’ by the Dutch Ministry of Traffic and Transportation, see Adviesdienst Verkeer en Vervoer (1995). 4. THE ‘PILOT PROJECTS’ STAGE The ‘pilot projects’ stage started in 1993 and ended in 1997. During this stage, many promising IM measures from the orientation stage were tested at specific locations in 29 1 the Netherlands. In total 7 pilots were conducted. In this paper, 6 pilots are briefly described. At the moment of writing, no information was available on the 7" pilot. Many of these pilots were. conducted near the city of Utrecht, see Figure 3. All pilots were applied at sites which suffer frequently from congested traffic. 4.1 Pilot 1: centrally located tow truck During this pilot, a dedicated tow truck was located at junction 'Oudenrijn', located to the south-east of Utrecht. The pilot was undertaken from August 30" 1993 up to April 29" 1994. When an incident occurred, the tow truck was immediately called for by the emergency room. The truck was allowed to use the shoulder lane of the motorway to approach the incident location. Furthermore, the crew of the truck was permitted to handle minor incidents, i.e. no injured people involved, themselves. Before the crew were allowed to remove vehicles from the road, several pictures had to be taken from the incident and the position of the vehicles had to be marked using chalk. The crew of the truck obtained training from the police. The original procedure for incident handling in the Netherlands was that after an incident was detected, the police was directed to the incident location. Following that, the police must assess the situation and request for an tow truck if this is required. After this request, a tow truck departs to the incident location. Clearly, the measures in this pilot speed up this procedure. The major findings were: the average response time (TI+T2+T3, cf. Figure 1) for the first emergency service to arrive decreased from 8.4 min to 4.7 min; 0 the average response time of the tow truck decreased from 31.3 min to 13.0 min; 0 in 20% of investigated cases, the tow truck was called while in fact it was not required; 0 clear procedures between emergency services and training of personnel were considered to be crucial; an one-man crew in the tow truck was cost-efficient; the measures had most effect when already applied well in advance of peak periods. Incidents that occur just prior to the major peak cause severe congestion; frequent re-informing of involved personnel of h? measures is needed. Otherwise personnel tend to forget the measures. The reader is referred to Adviesdienst Verkeer en Vervoer (1994) for more details. 4.2 Pilot 2: contract with local tow truck companies This pilot was conducted on motorways in the neighbourhood of Utrecht, from May znd1 994 up to July 29" 1994. The pilot involved contracts with local tow truck companies which were called for immediately by the emergency room, like in the first pilot.