Castle Rock - Intelligent Transportation Specialists - Current Projects

The Amber Plan is a voluntary, cooperative program between the law enforcement community and the broadcast media to send an emergency alert, called “Amber Alert” to the public when a child has been abducted and it is believed that the child’s life is in grave danger.

Most Amber Alerts are communicated to Transportation Operations Centers by telephone or fax. State Police forces recognize that while there is no evidence that these relatively informal arrangements are not effective, such an informal system has the potential for problems such as missed calls, data errors, and erroneous or false alerts.

Castle Rock is in the process of deploying a module to be known as CARS-Amber. In this deployment, the CARS multi-state travel information databases will allow any authorized law enforcement personnel to enter an Amber Alert from any location within the state. Such an entry would immediately drive automated DMS sign displays, media alerts, 511 messages, Highway Advisory Radio (HAR) and Low Power FM broadcasts and Internet dissemination without further manual intervention.

This concept is the basis for CARS, allowing central assembly of traveler information by CARS users from any Internet connection within the state. The current CARS user interface requires selection of at least one pre-defined phrase to avoid typographical and other errors. The Amber Alert information will be entered on a specific Amber Alert Graphical User Interface, with drop-down options for features such as hair and eye color. The CARS-Amber Alert entry tailors the local entry for each state to follow the Amber Alert plan within the state.

In addition, because CARS systems use developing and established ITS standards for information exchange from center to center, this will facilitate not only the assembly of Amber Alert messages statewide, but also the interstate exchange of Amber Alerts to other information dissemination mechanisms in other states. This state to state exchange of information will happen immediately in areas of bordering CARS states (i.e. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Minnesota-Iowa-Missouri) but is also available by exchanging with other systems in other states using ITS Standards (for example Washington State to Oregon).