Bringing ITS All Together

About the Book

Bringing ITS All Together offers a unique opportunity for understanding today's challenges, and the future potential for integrating transportation, public safety, and emergency management strategies, techniques, and tools to create systems that are proactive as well as responsive in today's post-September 11 reality. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 served as a wake-up call for public safety agencies across the country, at all levels of government. Numerous studies, including "911 Commission Report," have determined that communications interoperability is a primary shortfall of public safety agencies nationwide.

This book contains essays derived from presentations at Clark County's 2005 ITS Symposium. The contributors represent accomplished individuals in academic, practitioners, and corporate organizations in the field of intelligent transportation. This book brings to the fore several issues of public safety and transit improvement.

This publication focuses on defining the problems, offering potential solutions, and understanding what resources might be available to the nation's first responders to reach their mutual goal of having the best available interoperable communications supporting their efforts. Effective communications are essential for adequate public safety response, especially in the case of a multi-jurisdictional emergency. Nationally and internationally recognized experts in academia, transportation, public safety, emergency management, and communications provided the insights, lessons learned, and excellent solutions that resulted in Bringing ITS All Together. State and local governments as well as transit scholars and planners across the country will find this compilation of experiences and wisdom to be a valuable resource in helping to create and manage systems, and leverage limited resources to provide the best available safety and security within their respective jurisdictions.

About the Author

This book was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, with funds appropriated through the U.S. Senate Energy and Water Appropriations act of 2003. The appropriation called for Clark County to "study and demonstrate integration of transportation, public safety, and emergency management."

This book, along with other tools and resources acquired under the grant, offers a useful model and a detailed blueprint which provide decision makers in several disciplines ways to come together to find and implement the best solutions to a nationwide priority: ensuring that our first responders are prepared for, and can respond to, any emergency situation.