Case Study

Car Crash Management System (CCMS) is a new system proposed by IIS company. The aim is to assist the local government to prioritise and track traffic conditions. Traffic accidents happen anywhere and anytime. A major concern of country's government is that there is no effective coordination between the fire station, the police station and the hospital emergency department. The systems in a police station and in a fire station stand alone. Each system contains different information that is updated by a police officer and a fire coordinator (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Communication between PSC and FSC

Sometimes, traffic-reporting miscommunication can occur because of incomplete data or incorrect information provided by a police officer or a fire station coordinator. To reduce miscommunication, there is a need to develop a central tracking system that can be effectively used by authorised personnel.

This central tracking system will update information, such as car crash details and route plan. For instance, following a major accident on a highway or a road, such as a car catches fire or getting trap under water, authorised personnel will be notified. Those being notified include coordinators at the police station, fire station, hospitals and towing service company. Whereas for a minor car accident, only police officers, paramedics and the towing service company are required to be informed.

A critical problem of a standalone system is the scarcity of resources, e.g. the number of fire trucks and fireman, and for cases of major accidents the lack of fire trucks and firemen. It is difficult for the standalone system to monitor the number of fireman and police officers required onsite for every accident. For a multiple vehicle collision accident, more firemen and police officers are expected to be onsite. Unfortunately, the number of fireman and police officers in each suburb varies according to its population. For example, a small suburb might be equipped with 10 police officers, 10 firemen and 1 fire engine truck whilst in larger suburbs, they are more police officers, firemen and fire engine trucks.

CCMS starts operating at the point when either a police station or fire station receives a call of a crash from a person onsite. Once a given crash has been detected, either at the fire station or the police station, the PSC (police station coordinator) and the FSC (fire station coordinator) establish communication and identify the coordinators. Both the PSC and FSC then exchange crash details (vehicles registration plate numbers, location or GPS coordinates, time, status and description). Both coordinators develop a coordinated route plan for the number of vehicles to be deployed to specific locations with respective ETAs (expected time of arrival). The PSC and FSC state their respective number of fire trucks and police vehicle to deploy. The PSC proposes one route for fire trucks and one route for police vehicles to reach the crisis site. If the PSC finds a serious crash, they must coordinate and inform FSC to send more vehicles to the accident site. Once the vehicles arrive at the targeted locations, the PSC and FSC communicate to each other their arrival (per vehicle). The PSC and FSC communicate to each other the completion (per vehicle) of their respective objectives. The PSC and FSC agree to close the crisis and record the remaining details in their respective systems separately.

Tasks

1. Identify the stakeholders of the case study, analyse their objectives and responsibilities, and draw a rich picture diagram to depict the system under consideration. You can make valid assumptions, but all of the assumptions have to be stated clearly in bullet points along with the Rich Picture.

2. Propose a software development methodology for developing a central tracking system based on a 6-month timeline with project funding of AUD$300,000, excluding all hardware costs.

3. From the above scenario, draw a swim lane diagram showing all roles, tasks and decisions

4. Create a spreadsheet to show how the information collected, during the accident of a crash, can be stored in a database.

5. Identify at least three weaknesses/shortcomings of the existing system, and suggest a solution for each one of them.

6. Discuss how the use of social media can help in improving the existing system.