Performance Evaluation of Smart Intersections for Emergency Response Time based on Integration of Geospatial and Incident Data

The major objective of this research is to evaluate performance of improved intersections for response time to emergency vehicle preemption. Smart technologies have been introduced to civil infrastructure systems for resilient communities. The technologies need to evaluate their effectiveness and feasibility to confirm their introduction. This research focuses on the performance of emergency vehicle preemption, represented by response time, when smart intersections are introduced in a community. The response time is determined by not only intersections but also a number of factors such as traffic, distance, road conditions, and incident types. However, the evaluation of emergency response has often ignored factors related to emergency vehicle routes. In this respect, this research synthetically analyzes geospatial and incident data using each route of emergency vehicle and conducts before-and-after evaluations. The changes in performance are analyzed by the impact of smart intersections on response time through Bayesian regression models. The result provides measures of the project's performance. This study will contribute to the body of knowledge on modeling the impacts of technology application and integrating heterogeneous data sets. It will provide a way to confirm and prove the effectiveness of introducing smart technologies to our communities.