EVALUATION OF POST-INCIDENT TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT MEASURES FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE: A CASE STUDY OF KOLKATA CITY (Paper 760)

Emerging economies such as India are experiencing rapid urbanization and growth of private vehicles in urban areas, resulting in a significant imbalance between demand and supply of transport infrastructure which makes urban traffic management more complex in Indian cities. Occurrence of an incident can greatly intensify the existing congested traffic conditions at a location at a particular instant of time. Several factors of an incident situation such as location and time are expected to influence the decision-making process. Hence, the operational strategies need to be dynamic in nature to cater for incidents that are difficult to predict and such dynamic strategies should be implemented promptly.  This paper presents an initial investigation to identify suitable dynamic measures for traffic management for different incident scenarios to ensure early arrival of emergency vehicles for relief and evacuation and to minimize the impact of such incidents on the traffic situation. The methodology has been demonstrated with reference to a road network in the CBD (Central Business District) area of Kolkata city. Several traffic management measures for incident response are identified by reviewing available literatures. Those measures are evaluated by two methods: (i) By Expert Opinion Survey and (ii) Using a micro-simulation model. Then the results from both the methods are analysed and compared. The outcome includes ranking of different measures for each of the incident scenarios based on the comparative study. If an incident occurs in a network, the top ranked traffic management measures for different scenarios are recommended for incident response.