City of Surprise Cloud-based EVP

Completed by City of Surprise and ADOT with support from:

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Kimley-Horn

Etherwan

ITS Arizona Annual Fall Conference

October 2024

Presentation Overview

Motivation

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Project Overview

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Challenges

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Results

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Motivation

• City of Surprise currently uses Tomar equipment for EVP
• City staff (both Fire and Traffic) have very limited time to monitor, diagnose, repair, or replace aging equipment
• 2020 MAG/Mesa/MCDOT pilot of cloud-EVP through KITS demonstrated such operation to be possible
• MAG CMAQ funding applied for and received in 2022

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Project Overview

• Surprise Fire operates 35 emergency service vehicles
• Eight fire stations across the City
• Surprise Traffic/ITS operates 71 traffic signals
• All signals are connected via high-speed IP networking
• All signals are managed by KITS, with 20 signals on Bell Road operated in Adaptive mode via Kadence

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Challenges 🡪 Solutions

1. Existing Surprise fire AVL monitoring system (Geotab) was tested
• Found to have unacceptable latency and frequency of GPS updates
2. Dispatch status is not available from Phoenix Fire CAD via API
• Mesa Fire AVL feed was custom-generated by Mesa Fire IT to combine dispatch status and vehicle location data, updated every second
3. Many Surprise signals operate with very long pedestrian clearances

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Challenge Solving Process

10/9/2024

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Vehicle Locations

What do we need?

Dispatch Status

What are our options?

Geotab (Existing)

GPS Modems

EV Devices (Whelen)

CAD System

Adashi Analytics

• Low cost
• Low update frequency
• Difficult API
• No dispatch status

• Moderate cost
• High update frequency
• Previously integrated API
• Possibly no dispatch status

• Moderate cost
• High update frequency during dispatch
• New API
• Status of lights/sirens

• Low cost
• Extensive coordination with CAD provider
• Extensive coordination with IT
• New API

• Low cost
• Minimal coordination to implement
• Relay of dispatch status from CAD
• New API

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New hardware for vehicles

• Quotes requested from several mobile router suppliers
• EtherWAN offered good pricing, combined with custom development of an AVL app on the router
• The other vendors had an annual service fee, and provided no support for app development
• AVL app only pushes location data for trucks when lights & sirens are active via hardware I/O integration of the light bar with the router

Solution to issues #1 and #2

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“Get Ready Mode”

• When an emergency vehicle is active lights & sirens:
• EVP is requested for the next signal through Traction Priority to KITS
• The next possible signals are commanded to FREE
• FREE allows the clearances to start timing for conflicting phases, so it can be more responsive to the possible arrival of the fire truck
• When the truck turns or continues straight, the FREE command is lifted for the other two signals

Solution to issue #3

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Results!

Signals commanded FREE

Current truck location

• System is currently operational
• Performance tuning currently underway
• Fire department excited about reduced wear & tear due to braking
• Truck and signal performance together in one system

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Questions?