Crisis management as the part of smart traffic control in cities

Smart traffic management solution in the event of emergencies is a significant issue not only at national but also at urban level today. The degree of automation has been steadily increasing in recent years and this trend is not expected to stop. Therefore, traffic excesses and other incidents requiring efficient and intelligent solutions are more and more common in cities. Correctly set up crisis management system for the occurrence of these events can lead to increased safety of individual road users and their time savings. At the same time, crisis management is one of the tools of the state and cities, which can prevent unwanted spreading of events to a larger extent. The authors of the article are researching the possibilities of extending existing telematics technologies with other functionalities and technical elements so that it is possible to gradually introduce and build crisis management systems in cities. The main idea is to design an intelligent crisis management system for cities using existing traffic lights. All visions and proposals of the crisis management system are made in connection with the existing legislation at the national level in the Czech Republic and respect the strategic document "Action Plan for the Development of Intelligent Transportation Systems in the Czech Republic by 2020 (with a view to 2050)." First, an inductive approach was used for the research. Based on the analysis of existing approaches to crisis management systems and on the analysis of traffic lights in the Czech Republic, general conclusions were drawn that can serve as an input for any design of the crisis management system in cities in the future. The authors then made and verified the design on the basis of traffic engineering data and experience in the town of Uherske Hradiste. Due to the impracticability of practical verification in reality, the proposal was microsimulated. This article therefore briefly describes the whole mentioned research process, its results and also points out the complexity of implementing crisis management systems not only from the technological and functional point of view but also from the organizational and political point of view.