Q. What kind of wireless security has been integrated in the test beds to ensure vehicle making request is legit?
A. Larry Head: We're using the DSRC standard communications. We haven't implemented any specific security things on our side on the application end. In the DSRC standards that are being developed and probably through Valerie's office you guys may know better than I do the status of some of that. The DSRC provides the layer of security. So we didn't do anything specific in our demonstration in the parking lot for security.
Valerie Briggs: Yes. I will add that that is an ongoing issue with the standards. The standards are in development and expected to be balloted and completed about a year from now. Security and how it would be enforced and all of those issues are institutional issues that are still under development. Like Larry said, there is a security layer in the standards which has proven to be very important in both this test and the proof of concept testing that we've done.
Greg Larson: Valerie, could I add to your answer?
Valerie Briggs: Yes, please.
Greg Larson: This is Greg. For those of you that are really interested, the specific standard is IEEE 1609 — I think it's 1609.3, which has additional information on the security layer for DSRC.
Q. Valerie Briggs: I'm going to ask this question of Faisal and Greg. If you had a couple words of advice to give to other organizations that might be thinking of doing some testing similar to yours or in the VII arena, what would you recommend to them? We'll start with Faisal.
A. Faisal Saleem: I think Lisa touched upon some of it. I think what worked for us here was the existing collaboration. We were really surprised to bring our application and demo it even in a year. I think the fundamental is to have that collaboration. We had a great partnership with the universities and between ADOT and MCDOT and other partners here and public safety agencies as well. I think the second lesson learned for us was to do a thorough testing in the labs. The universities were very helpful for us. Just a month before our demo we were not sure even if we would be successful, but we didn't know that Larry was testing them or in Tucson in his lab and on the streets out there. I think before we bring anything for a demo, it's very important to focus on the lab and make sure everything works. The third point I would like to make was that we were a little lucky in terms of we found that technology was far more established than we thought initially. I think the work which you guys have done at your level in the JPO and even in the private industry. The radios, for example, function great. I think the one lesson I would share with everybody is that technology is not that far out as we think. Greg, any thoughts from your side?
Greg Larson: Actually, I just want to echo your last point. To me, the best advice I can give everybody is to not try and reinvent the wheel. I know one of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that the EVII DSRC radio is based on the Savari Networks' radio that was developed for our project. I don't want anybody to go out and think they have to build their own DSRC radio. Copy what other people have already done. Start at the point we're at right now, not at the beginning.
Q. to Larry Head: you familiar with the Monrovia EVP test site?
A. Larry Head: I'm not. I'd like to learn some more information about it. I saw the answer response that we can find information on the ITS government website. But I'm not familiar. I would love to learn more about it.
Q. In SafeTrip-21, in "Mobile Millennium", how is privacy protected when probe data is transmitted via cell phone?
A. Valarie Briggs: Greg, that one's for you.
Greg Larson: Good question. Actually, Nokia and NAVTEQ are working with Rutgers University to design privacy protection into the Mobile Millennium. I'm not familiar with the details, but there are many technical procedures that they use, the most notable of which is that not all of the vehicles transmit their data continuously. There is a random period of time between transmissions. Because there is going to be so many vehicles that are instrumented, it fills in all the blanks. Because of the randomness at which the data is transmitted, it's hard to track an individual vehicle, for example, through the system. Obviously, privacy is a huge concern, and it is being designed into the system through the help of researchers at Rutgers University. If you go to the Mobile Millennium website, which was on one of my slides, you will be able to find more about privacy.
Q. Valerie Briggs [To Greg Larson and Faisal Saleem]: Both of your agencies have invested heavily in VII and really your agencies were the ones who started these programs. What was the motivation for your agencies in doing these?
A. Faisal Saleem: Okay, let me go first. I think for us we have an established arterial incident response team, which is REACT. They operate 24/7. They face day-to-day challenges that we wanted to address. We looked into the VII technology. The motivation was the safety of our responders and providing the service to the public. If they can respond faster, they can clear out the incidents faster. I think that was the key motivation. Actually, there was an unfortunate incident a few years back where one of our key REACT team members lost his life. I think we see a lot of safety benefit as well as mobility benefit and certainly we'd like to support and expand our REACT team and equipment with the best of technologies for their safety and the safety of the public.
Greg Larson: Just to add to that, the reason that California is involved in VII is both safety and mobility again. We have over a million vehicle crashes each year, of which 210,000 are injury crashes resulting in 4,000 fatalities. The total cost to society of those crashes is more than $25 billion per year in California, according to the Strategic Highway Safety Plan. Correspondingly, on the mobility side, on average in the U.S., drivers experience about 50 hours of delay per year sitting in traffic. In California it's twice that. So there's obviously a huge motivation for us to reduce the amount of delay on the freeway system. The societal cost for that is more than $21 billion per year in California. Between safety and mobility you're talking about $50 billion in societal costs in California alone. That's a good enough motivation to be involved in VII. I think the applications we're talking about have the potential to considerably improve safety and mobility.
Q. To Lisa (and the respective teams participating in these programs): (related to advancing VII and public safety partnerships): I commend you for sponsoring and 'brokering' new relationships in the public/private sectors, in particular, putting public safety at the table with DOT and industry members for collaborative efforts. There are a number of common threads in USDOT programs (e.g. ITS RITA, VII, SBIR Program and others) that, if looked at from 50,000 ft, can assist state and local government agencies improve communications efforts and move them into the future rather than exacerbate the stove-pipe. On the partnership front, are the folks at RITA (in VII in particular) working with your counterparts at USDOT to look at common threads (whether in deliverables, stakeholder communities/outreach and architectures)? The commonalities present a natural fit or next steps for the federal level in moving these initial programs forward toward a national show piece.
For Mr. Larson, and Mr. Saleem: First, I commend your heavy-lifting in the work conducted in a much needed area. You mentioned public/private partnerships and work with associations of government. There are a number of common threads with projects at USDOT and the public safety community throughout the US (local, state and Federal government levels). Do any of these programs partner with the public safety and telematics (e.g. OnStar, ATX) agencies? Mr. Saleem mentioned Phoenix, EMS, and working toward including public safety agencies — does this include law enforcement and fire services, specifically in the area of emergency planning and/or notification services over common architectures?
A. Valerie Briggs: Yes, indeed we are. There is more information available on the website, but certainly we're trying to develop some tools so that we make sure we know what research is going on and can keep the community apprised of research that's going on and where it stands. Also making sure that we have an active communications with those state and local agencies who we know are doing research in the VII area through the VII working group itself. Then also we are looking at some activities in the future, and I will just refer you to the website rather than get into the details on those.
Faisal Saleem: Valerie, in that long comment and question, I think they're trying to find out from us if we have existing working relationships with public safety agencies. The answer is we do, although we don't have with a lot of telematics companies like OnStar and ATX out there. Here in the Phoenix metro area, as I pointed out in my presentation, we are able to access to both Phoenix Fire CAD system. They strip out their fire type of information, but they automatically push to RADS the information that is needed for transportation operations and traveler information. We, in turn, push that into the 511 system. It's all an automatic system. Likewise, we have data exchange with the DPS. We can access their data, which again is filtered. We don't get the cop stuff, but we do get the transportation related information. That information is really very helpful where we don't have the freeway management system. We don't have sensors or cameras. So that information is really valuable to us. So there's an ongoing relationship. On our side, as I said, we're working on the video distribution project through the Internet so that we can provide video feeds from our cameras in a secured environment to the public safety agencies.
Q. [Follow Up to Previous Question]: The FCC, in their third NPRM regarding the 700 MHz emergency response spectrum, has issued a position that DOTs are not considered first responders. There are multiple collaborative efforts ongoing to change this interpretation. Depending on the direction of this ruling, can you briefly address how this may impact or affect the EVII partners and programming? Would you expect that to have an effect?
A. Faisal Saleem: At this point, I'm not able to respond to that. I don't know the details yet and how the 700 MHz fits into the EVII program. I would have to look into that. If I can get an email, we will be happy to respond, or if Greg wants to answer that.
Greg Larson: Actually, I don't know the answer to that question.
Q. Greg Larson [To Larry Head]: I just have an observation to make about the ramp meter queue flushing out application. In California, when there are two lanes on a ramp, if you give the left lane a green and the right lane a red, all of the traffic in the right lane will end up in the left lane, right in front of your emergency vehicle.
A. Larry Head: We discussed that, but the other thing that we have to consider is that the emergency vehicle will have lights and sirens and vehicles should be moving to the right anyway. We've had this debate. We don't actually know the answer. We'd kind of like to go out and do some field observations.
Greg Larson: I think you might need to do so.
Larry Head: I agree. I agree. I think it's really important.
Q. [Caller]: The question I have is: Is it critical that the response vehicles park in a specific spot when they respond?
A. Larry Head: Brian, this is Larry Head. I think what you're asking is that if the vehicle is going to become part of the infrastructure and be the ad hoc RSU, does it have to be parked in a specific spot, such as behind the incident or showing that two lanes are blocked or something like that? Is that correct?
[Caller]: That is correct.
Larry Head: That was our assumption is that the first response vehicle at an incident would park behind the incident and would become the broadcaster. That was an assumption we made in doing the development. That's a good question. I wonder if we should be asking the first responders if they have a procedure for doing that and how we would integrate with them.
Greg Larson: Larry, as far as the range of the DSRC radios, they will go out 1,000 meters.
Larry Head: That's correct.
Greg Larson: So it's not necessarily essential that they park immediately behind the incident.
[Caller]: My concern is that you get multiple responders out there parking like in a Kmart parking lot then you've got all kinds of data that's getting confused.
Larry Head: Brian, the way that we envision the application working and we just built a very simple prototype, so I don't want to give you the wrong impression, but that the ad hoc network that's there, that's why we call it ad hoc, will have some networking rules that says, "I am the responder for this incident." The other vehicles that are there then don't become part of the infrastructure and the response. There has to be an ad hoc network rule to broker who sends the response.
A. [Caller]: Okay, thank you.
Q. For anyone/all: Much like including Departments of Transportation as "Emergency Responders," do you include the seaports (for those of you with access to waterways)? Those areas have interesting governance structures and budgets that keep them removed from public safety as a whole, yet they have similar departments and needs in public safety (e.g. bridges in/around a port; navigating emergency vehicles in a port environment).
A. Doug Getman: Since Arizona is not a state with an active seaport, stakeholder coordination with this type of entity was not explicitly considered in Arizona E-VII. When the types of incident management applications developed under this program are disseminated to other States with active seaports, it will be important for those States to coordinate with seaport representatives.
Q. Are considerations being given to integrating information sharing with responders that may be secondary responders under mutual aid agreements, but don't have data terminals in vehicles? Secondary to that, with regard to signal preemption for legacy system users coming into newer infrastructure (responding to an active incident, or a rural EMS with code-3 transport to metro trauma center), what is being done for backward compatibility?
A. Doug Getman: (a) Secondary responders without data terminals could be reached via their cellular phones using text messaging, as demonstrated in the E-VII prototype applications. Where the public might receive rather general descriptive information about an incident, secondary responders could be sent more detailed textual information, snapshot photos, and/or enhanced audio SMS to provide a richer level of detail and response support. (b) Use of optical preemption systems is not precluded with the use of preemption systems based on DSRC as was developed in Arizona E-VII. Integration of the two would be difficult, however, due to the proprietary nature of existing optical systems.
