Development of Incident Management Performance Measures Database and Supporting Training Material

Overall, Myles W.; Mukai, Justin; Sakhare, Rahul Suryakant; Desai, Jairaj; Lowther, Hillary; Cox, Edward D.; Sturdevant, James R.; Bullock, Darcy M. · 2025 · ROSA P / Purdue University. Joint Transportation Research Program

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Summary

This study addresses the critical safety issue of secondary crashes, which frequently occur in traffic queues upstream of roadway incidents. To mitigate these risks, the research focuses on Traffic Incident Management (TIM), the coordinated multi-agency response to such events. The primary objective was to develop a comprehensive library of after-action case studies to evaluate current TIM practices and serve as training material for responders. The motivation stems from the need for localized learning tools that can help stakeholders build consensus on best practices and improve situational awareness during incident response. The researchers compiled 267 detailed after-action review reports for incidents occurring on Indiana highways between June 2020 and March 2025. The methodology involved integrating multiple data sources to reconstruct incident timelines and assess response effectiveness. Key datasets included anonymized connected vehicle (CV) trajectory data, which provided high-fidelity spatiotemporal traffic speed heatmaps; images from Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) cameras; dash camera footage from commercial trucks; redacted crash reports from the Automated Reporting Information Exchange System (ARIES); and, in some cases, dispatch center audio. The team defined specific TIM event sequences and summary intervals, such as detection, verification, response, roadway clearance, and incident clearance times, extracting these metrics from the combined data sources. The resulting archive, described as the most extensive of its kind in the United States, is indexed by date, location, route, and incident type. The study presents statistics on response times across various incident categories, including car crashes, semi-truck crashes, and fires, broken down by INDOT district. Seven illustrative case studies from Indiana, along with special studies on the impacts of solar eclipses, tornadoes, and major national events like Hurricane Milton and the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, demonstrate the utility of the data. The findings highlight that integrating camera imagery, CV data, and dispatch audio provides responders with valuable context, allowing them to visualize the upstream impact of incidents and identify opportunities for peer learning and process improvement. The significance of this work lies in its dual role as a training resource and a model for future TIM documentation. The authors recommend that agencies incorporate visual data sources like ITS and dash camera images, as well as dispatch audio, into after-action reviews to enhance responder training and promote best practices. The study also introduces a heatmap tool for real-time traffic condition monitoring. By providing a template for comprehensive after-action reporting, this research supports the development of standardized TIM documentation nationwide, ultimately aiming to reduce secondary crashes and improve the safety and efficiency of incident management operations.

Key finding

Integrating connected vehicle data, camera imagery, and dispatch audio into after-action reports provides valuable context for responder training and improves situational awareness regarding incident impacts and clearance times.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 267

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• naturalistic crash near crash
• incidence prevalence

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation
• Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes
• Methodological Resource: dataset resource