A Study on Utilization Information of Disaster Site for Real-Time Situation Management

<p>In the event of a disaster, most of the response systems are divided into final decision makers who direct overall situation management, preparation, response, and restoration work, and field managers who share the status of the actual disaster at the site and perform the tasks they are directed to.</p><p>Although major means of sharing situations between decision makers and field managers in Korea are used, such as telephone, messenger, and report, the information provided in simple text format was inconvenient to decision makers who have to issue business instructions after considering the surrounding status information and concerns over possible future damage.</p><p>In response, a GIS-based smart disaster situation management system was established to manage the situation quickly at the site of a disaster.</p><p>The system presents 32 types of information related to disaster safety produced by 12 agencies (the Korea Meteorological Administration, the National Transport Information Center, Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic, etc.) on a single screen (e.g. weather/ ocean observation information, CCTV video information, etc.) and provides detailed location of disaster areas, location of damage sites and photos, and visualizing the weather information on a multidisciplinary basis to enable the decision panel to provide visualisation.</p><p>Through mobile applications, we have developed a function that allows field managers to upload information obtained from professional equipment (photo, radar, chemical measuring, etc.) directly into the system and will study various disaster site investigation information so that it can be used to support professional situation management in the future.</p>

Comparative Study of Speed Reduction Effects of Photo-Radar and Speed Display Boards

Two forms of automated motor-vehicle speed control, speed display boards and photo-radar, are compared. Despite a growing body of research on the devices, there is little reliable empirical evidence about their effectiveness. Three issues are examined: ( a) which of these devices is more effective in lowering speeds, ( b) whether supplementing display boards with police enforcement makes them more effective, and ( c) which device is more cost-effective. The study was conducted on three comparable streets in Riverside, California, over a 4-week period. Site 1 employed a display board with no enforcement; Site 2, a display board with intermittent enforcement; and Site 3, photo-radar. Results show that both devices, while deployed, significantly reduce vehicle speeds 7 to 8 km/h, and particularly reduce the number of vehicles traveling 16 km/h (10 mph) or more over the posted limit. Supplementing the display board with intermittent enforcement significantly increased its effectiveness. Although both devices produced substantial speed reductions while in operation, only display boards demonstrated carryover effects. The enforced display board produced a substantial short-term (but not longer-term) carryover effect; the unenforced display board demonstrated a longer-term (but not short-term) carryover effect, but only at the alongside location, 1 week after its removal. The three cost-effectiveness estimates generated showed that the unenforced speed display board was the most cost-effective; the enforced display board came in second; and the photo-radar placed third.

Effects on Accidents of Automatic Speed Enforcement in Norway

Automatic speed enforcement by means of photo radar was introduced in Norway in 1988. The results of a before-and-after study of the effects of automatic speed enforcement on accidents are reported in this paper. The study controlled for general trends in the number of accidents and regression to the mean. A statistically significant reduction of 20 percent in the number of injury accidents was found. The number of property-damage-only accidents was reduced by 12 percent. This change was not statistically significant at the 5 percent level. The effect of automatic speed enforcement on the number of injury accidents varied according to the level of conformance with official warrants for its use. The warrants refer to accident rate (accidents per vehicle kilometer) and accident density (accidents per kilometer of road). A decline of 26 percent in injury accidents was found on road sections conforming with both warrants. On road sections not conforming with any of the warrants, injury accidents declined by 5 percent. The results of this study confirm the results of previous studies of the effects of automatic speed enforcement on accidents.