The Iowa Department of Transportation soon will have a new resource at its fingertips, thanks to an Iowa State scientist.

Dan Gieseman, systems analyst for the ISU Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE), developed the Incident Location Tool for law enforcement agencies to quickly and easily find accidents and file reports.

“This will take us from the link-node method to GIS [Geographic Information Systems],” said Mary Jensen, program manager in the Motor Vehicle Division of the DOT. “Link node is complex and cumbersome with many paper maps, and GIS is simply a point-and-click system that automates and simplifies the [report-filing] process.”

Gieseman said the GIS map and database can tell an officer the amount of traffic, exact location of a crash and other needed information with the click of a mouse.

Drivers licenses, vehicle registrations and commercial vehicle registrations are bar coded in Iowa, Jensen said.

“Each officer will have a computer and a bar code reader,” she said. “By scanning in the license and registration, the report is filed automatically.”

The Incident Location Tool eventually will make paper reports obsolete, Gieseman said. About 10 percent of reports currently are filed electronically.

“About 60 agencies use the system now, but some fill out reports on paper and bring them in. From there, they are transmitted,” Jensen said.

Gieseman said there are three phases to the Incident Location Tool project.

The first, which began in April of 1998, dealt with the programming and development of the tool. A committee was involved in that phase, which was sponsored by the DOT.

Phase two involved making the tool work. Gieseman put in many hours as the only programmer for the system, he said.

The third phase will make additions or modifications to the system. Gieseman said the project will cost about $100,000 and will be instituted in early 2000.

There are two advantages to the Incident Location Tool, Jensen said.

“The information is available more quickly, combined with electronic data collection,” she said. “The quality of data is also increased.”

Data gathered by the Incident Location Tool will be coupled with another system, the Advantage Safety program, which includes drivers’ names and license plate numbers, Gieseman said.

“Citations can be transmitted electronically from the police station to local servers,” he said. “The courts then use that server to automatically download the information.”

The information gathered by the Incident Location Tool will be given to state, county and city engineers.