Completed Projects

State Route Global Positioning Satellite Location Referencing System – GPS/LRS

In July 2003, the Transportation Data Office received funding to establish a 4-year project to develop a GPS based LRS for the state highway system. Using a specially equipped van with a GPS antenna and other GPS components, GPS coordinate data is collected at 1-second intervals while driving at highway speeds using mapping grade equipment. The project will locate all state routes, including ramps; as of April 2006, 75% of the state highway system has been completed. Once completed, a GIS base map will be created that will provide GIS users with a much more accurate LRS for placing objects and events.

Once complete, the GPS/LRS can be used as a base map within the Incident Location Tool so officers can accurately locate collisions onsite, thus reducing the need for office staff to verify collision locations on state routes. Other business areas of WSDOT such as maintenance and incident response could also use this base map.

Project Lead: Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Office: Transportation Data Office
Phone Number: (360) 570-2497
Implementation Schedule: 7/2003 – 6/2007

Collision Data Backlog Elimination

Under direction from the 2001 state legislature, the Washington State Department of Transportation designed, built and implemented a new, transactional SQL server-based statewide collision records system, CLAS (Collision Location and Analysis System); CLAS, deployed in May of 2002, is used to capture, store and retrieve data derived from all Police Traffic Collision Reports (PTCR) and Citizen Collision Reports that are filed with the state. Prior to 2002, there had been no functioning statewide collision records system for five years, resulting in an substantial backlog of collision records.

This project provided resources to allow the Department of Transportation to reduce the collision report backlog by extending ten temporary Data Entry Operator positions. As of October 1, 2005, the backlog had been eliminated and collision reports were entered into the statewide collision database and ready for analysis within 75 days of the incident.

Project Lead: Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Office: Transportation Data Office
Phone Number: (360) 570-2497
Implementation Schedule: 8/2004 – 9/2005

WA EMS Information System (WEMSIS)

The Washington EMS Information System will capture non-confidential data on all prehospital patient encounters from the 500+ licensed prehospital services in the state. WEMSIS establishes a standard for reporting data, a DOH repository for collecting and storing the data, and a method for prehospital agencies, supervising physicians, regional planners and others to retrieve reports from the dataset.

The WEMSIS project is central to efforts in Washington to improve the integration of components of the state’s traffic records system. This project provides vital information to create a link between collisions and the injuries, costs, and other outcomes that result.

Project Lead: Department of Health (DOH)
Office: Office of Emergency Medical Services & Trauma
Phone Number: (360) 236-2869
Implementation Schedule: 10/2004 – 9/2008

Commercial Vehicle Collision Data Feed & Image Viewer

This project developed a collision image viewer to allow agencies who rely on collision data to view electronic images of collision reports. The Washington State Patrol’s Commercial Vehicle Division (CVD) uses this product to view collision reports involving commercial vehicles. This collision image viewer was used in the Electronic County Location Coding project to provide county engineers access to collision report images. Additionally, the project provided CVD with a data feed containing collision data for commercial vehicle collisions. This data feed auto populates certain fields within the SafetyNet data system.

Project Lead: Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Office: Transportation Data Office
Phone Number: (360) 570-2497 /(360) 570-2412
Implementation Schedule: 1/2005 – 12/2005

Electronic County Location Coding (CLCF)

Annually, an estimated 30,000 collision reports require additional location analysis by county engineers. These engineers provided the additional data and had to mail the CLCF back to the WSDOT.

This project automated this process by sending an electronic notice to county engineers to notify of a collision in their jurisdiction. Engineers can now access a WSDOT internet site and view an electronic image of the collision report. Location analysis can be performed through the site and the additional location analysis is instantaneously loaded directly into the statewide collision database.

Project Lead: Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Office: Transportation Data Office
Phone Number: (360) 570-2497
Implementation Schedule: 2/2005 – 11/2005

Roadside Features Inventory Program (RFIP)

The Roadside Features Inventory Program (RFIP) is a corporate program for collecting, storing, and reporting state route roadside features such as sign supports, culverts, barriers, tree groups, etc., that are located in or near the clear zone of roadways.

The Roadside Feature Inventory Project will provide WSDOT business areas and Regions with the ability to collect, store and report accurate locations of defined features and associated attributes. Each feature will be associated with the department’s existing Distance Measuring Instrument Linear Referencing System (DMI-LRS), stored in a widely available corporate database that can be accessed through the GIS Workbench. A future project will be to associate the data collected through the RFIP project to the new Global Positioning Satellite Location Referencing System (GPS/LRS).

Project Lead: Washington State Department of Transportation(WSDOT) Regional Offices
Office: Transportation Data Office
Phone Number: (360) 570-2430
Implementation Schedule: 7/2005 – 6/2009

Mobility Collision Analysis Module

County traffic engineers have access to collision data through the statewide database maintained by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). However, prior to this project, this data was only available in the raw database form. County personnel had no software for viewing, querying, or analyzing this data or correlating it with their other road system attributes.

This project added a CLAS module to Mobility to enable county engineers to make more informed decisions on traffic safety improvements. This module consists of forms for viewing and updating CLAS records, reporting tools for effective ad-hoc queries of the CLAS records, “canned” routines for analysis of CLAS records (such as identifying high collision locations), methods of correlating collision records with other Mobility safety records (such as signs, guardrails, striping, surface, geometry, intersections, and traffic volumes), and utilities for exporting records to other county systems for further analysis or reporting.

Project Lead: County Road Administration Board (CRAB)
Office: Information Services Division
Phone Number: (360) 753-5989
Implementation Schedule: 7/2005 – 12/2005