Learn how the Nevada Highway Patrol is proactively managing traffic

About

The Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP), a division of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, is responsible for law enforcement across the entire state of Nevada. Its Southern Command, located in Las Vegas, is uniquely positioned; the agency shares a dispatch center with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada's (RTC) and Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation (FAST), the division responsible for monitoring and controlling traffic in the Southern Nevada region.

Challenge

NHP, RTC, and FAST shared a dispatch center, but each agency used different software systems, making communication cumbersome. Without a common system platform, agencies were unable to effectively share real-time information hindering their ability to be prepared and respond to incidents quickly. Before they engaged with Rekor, officers received incident alerts solely from 911 calls routed through the Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.

Understandably, people in distress are not always the most reliable sources of information. This resulted in misreported locations, incorrect information, and incidents not being reported, leading to more reactive than proactive responses from the force.

Solution

Nevada Highway Patrol selected Rekor Command™ because it is fully cloud-based and accessible to NHP users through their mobile digital computers (MDC), tablets, and desktops. The live map displays active crashes, traffic slowdowns, construction zones, road closures, and more. Additional map layers show the location of other NHP Officers, Nevada Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) Units, and Roadway Maintenance drivers. The platform integrates with FAST's closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV), giving officers multiple viewpoints of their chosen location.

Incident alerts are received by officers through an icon-based notification. When they click on the incident alert, all relevant details appear, including the precise incident location, a 20-second looped GIF, geofenced CCTV footage, insights on current road conditions, as well as relevant notes.

"Having the ability to be on the same sort of platform with the same sort of information and pictures, and identifying the resources that we need, can help our executive management have a better scope of understanding of what's happening across our valley in these different incidents." - Lieutenant John Arias, Highway Patrol Division Southern Command

Results

Using in-vehicle data and artificial intelligence, Rekor has been able to identify incidents faster than previous methods employed by NHP. According to the most recent Early Identification Time Analysis Report*, 10.66% of all crash incidents that occurred on Southern Nevada highways were identified by Rekor Command (and alerted to RTC/NHP) nine minutes earlier than the agency's existing CAD system. Improvements in incident detection have made it possible for officers to respond quicker. Every minute counts in dangerous, potentially even life-threatening situations.

_{*Early Identification Time Analysis Report was conducted in late 2019 and published in February 2020}

"With utilizing Rekor's platform, getting these calls, identifying exactly where they are, and even getting a picture of the scene, our officers know exactly where they're at so they're not responding to the wrong location...extending the time to those valuable minutes to get to the incidents to keep them safe - provide life-saving steps – or avoid secondary collisions." - Lieutenant John Arias, Highway Patrol Division Southern Command

Having a common platform with partner agencies has also enabled significant improvement in NHP's ability to coordinate and collaborate inter-departmentally. The agency accesses the same information as FAST, Nevada FSP, and Highway Maintenance, resulting in better-informed decisions.

"They made a platform that allowed us to exchange information seamlessly. And the true benefit to something like that is when you can share what we're seeing here with the units in the field as if they were here." - Theresa Gaisser, Manager of Engineering, RTC FAST

Conclusion

Rekor Command gave Nevada's NHP, RTC, and FAST agencies a common platform for traffic management solutions which allowed for:

• An average 9-minute reduction in incident identification time
• Greater context of incident details before arriving on scene
• Improved coordination and mitigation with partner agencies
• Enhanced tools for preventing future incidents from occurring

Built on AWS

Rekor Command is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). In addition to keeping user data completely secure and protected in the cloud, AWS was chosen due to its reliability and configurability. One feature that benefits greatly from the AWS suite of solutions is Rekor’s automated incident detection feature which is enabled by Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK). Lastly, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) offers secure, scalable processing and streaming across the entirety of Rekor Command. Features like these make AWS a perfect service provider for teams building Smart City solutions.