Incident Management Plans

General Description:

Incident management is defined as the systematic, planned, and coordinated use of human, institutional, mechanical, and technical resources to reduce the duration and impact of incidents, and improve the safety of motorists, crash victims, and incident responders. These resources are also used to increase the operating efficiency, safety, and mobility of the highway by systematically reducing the time to detect and verify an incident occurrence; implementing the appropriate response; and safely clearing the incident, while managing the affected flow until full capacity is restored.

Effects of Solution:

¨ Increase Passenger Throughput

¨ Increase Roadway Capacity

þ Manage System Efficiency (Improves safety and restores capacity quickly)

¨ Reduce Local Demand

Incident Management Plans are designed to ensure minimum incident durations, which correlates with maintaining a system’s capacity.  These plans deal with managing current system efficiency through the coordination between agencies responding to incidents. 

Examples of Implementation:

See Additional Resources section for more information.

Cost/Financial Information:

Incident Management Plans can require significant amounts of time (and the related cost) to initiate.  However, some measures can be taken amongst agencies that require little capital. 

Additional Resources:

Definition taken from the Traffic Incident Management Handbook prepared by PB Farradyne for the Federal Highway Administration Office of Travel Management

The document is located at:

Washington State Department of Transportation website:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/incidentresponse/default.htm

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