Evaluation of a Virtual Coordination Center for Integrated Multimodal Corridor Management in Seattle Revealed 14.5 Percent Improvement in User Satisfaction in Intra-Agency Communication During Incidents.
WSDOT Study Evaluated Virtual Coordination Center for Multi-Agency Coordination in Traffic Incident Management Using Survey Data and Benefit-and-Cost analysis.
Seattle, Washington, United States
Model Deployment of the Virtual Coordination Center for Multimodal Integrated Corridor Management
Summary Information
This project developed and deployed a Virtual Coordination Center (VCC) as part of a digital collaborative effort for integrated multimodal corridor management. VCC supports the Seattle Fire Department (SFD), Seattle Police Department (SPD), Seattle DOT (SDOT), King County Metro Transit, Sound Transit, Washington State Patrol (WSP), and Washington State DOT (WSDOT) in their interagency management of incidents that impact the regional transportation system. As part of this project, from February 27 to September 30, 2023, the VCC model deployment underwent operational evaluation in three phases in the form of VCC online user surveys and interviews, in comparison to the baseline period of November 2, 2020 – February 26, 2023, along with a benefit-cost analysis.
METHODOLOGY
The VCC dashboard displayed panels for the Integrated Dispatch Feed and Active VCC Incidents. The Integrated Dispatch Feed provided near real-time updates of dispatch events from Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems from SFD, SDP, and WSP, operational dispatches from the King County Transit Control Center (TCC), and information from the WSDOT Transportation Management Center (TMC), linking dispatch events to a situation map with key details. VCC enabled multi-agency collaboration for incident analysis, congestion management, and public outreach, among other features. The baseline evaluation included 120 survey responses and 17 interviews, while the deployment period had 110 survey responses and 34 interviews. Participants included incident responders, congestion managers, public information officers, and executives . The study also conducted a 10-year benefit-and-cost analysis (BCA) with respect to varying delay time savings due to the VCC. The costs included the initial deployment and the annual operation cost of the VCC.
FINDINGS
- The survey results revealed a 14.5 and 20.6 percent improvement in agency personnel user satisfaction with intra-agency and interagency communication during incidents due to VCC deployment, respectively.
- The survey results also revealed that 81.4 percent of the agency Phase 1 survey participants (February 27 - May 5, 2023) indicated trust in the information available in the active VCC Incident Model. Percentages for Phase 2 (May 6 - July 14, 2023) and Phase 3 (July 15 - September 30, 2023) were 75.8 and 80.7, respectively.
- BCA results showed that the VCC would break even at three-minute decrease in incident delay, which would result in a benefit-cost ratio of 1.07.
- In addition, the BCA results showed that a six-minute and 10-minute delay reduction would lead to a benefit-cost ratio of 2.14 and 3.57, respectively.
