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Track: Transportation, Logistics Planning
Michael J. Berman
King County Department of Transportation
821 Second Avenue
MS 53
Seattle, WA 98104-1598
Telephone: 206-689-3732
Fax: 206-684-2059
E-mail: michael.berman@metrokc.gov
Robert Wade, David Kreinheder, Tamara Davis
Transit Security Incident Analysis and Reporting Using GIS
The King County Department of Transportation's Transit Division provides public transportation services within King County, Washington. A key element for successful implementation of the transit system is customer satisfaction with issues relating to security. In the past, Transit Security tracked and reported on more than 3,000 security incidents per year using a DOS-based database management system. The purposes of this system were to maintain security for drivers and passengers, identify systematic patterns in the occurrence of security incidents in order to optimize the deployment of security assets, provide timely information on security-related incidents, and provide historical information in support of planning special event coverage. Although one of the safest transit systems in the country, the King County Transit Division's old security incident reporting system was unable to combine spatial analyses to optimize the placement of security personnel. As part of a federal grant to provide
specialized Geographic Information Systems (GIS) desktop tools to the agency, the Transit GIS group developed a new Transit security incident data entry, analysis, and reporting application. This application incorporates GIS technology using MapObjects and Microsoft Visual Basic with standard database querying capabilities using Microsoft Access to provide an efficient analytical tool for accomplishing the goals of Transit Security. It allows security personnel to ask a variety of spatial and nonspatial database queries in an easy-to-use graphical user interface permitting more efficient deployment of resources. In addition, it assists Security personnel in providing more informative map-based reports to operations staff and the Transit director. Finally, this application can easily be adapted to provide spatial and non-spatial database analytical tools to other groups within the Transit Division such as Transit Safety and Facilities Management.
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