Experiences of SMS warnings in Jyväskylä

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Abigayle Hubbard
7 years ago
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1 Winter Road Congress January 2014, Paviljonki Experiences of SMS warnings in Jyväskylä Tuula Smolander, Head of Street Department City Infrastructure Services

2 SMS warning service In Finland, an average of 50,000 pedestrians have to seek medical help for injuries caused by slippery conditions every year. The risk of slipping increases with age, but young people suffer fractures as well. The direct and indirect costs of slipping amount to hundreds of millions of euros. The cost of treating a hip facture is approximately EUR 15,500 in the first year. One in four elderly people who suffer a fall die within one year from the accident. Those responsible for the winter street maintenance must be on call for slippery conditions in any case. Modern technology makes it possible to provide street-users with precisely targeted real-time information on slippery conditions.

3 Warnings of slippery conditions via SMS Winter season : available in Lahti, Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Oulu, Kuopio and Järvenpää The service was launched in Jyväskylä in and is now available for the fifth consecutive winter season The service presently reaches about 9,000 people (1,552 people in Jyväskylä) A total of 426 warnings have been issued through the service (44 warnings in Jyväskylä) A total of about 4 million text messages have been sent through the service (about 400,000 in Jyväskylä) Statistically, at least one in 5,000 SMS warnings prevents a slipping, which produces a minimum saving of EUR 1 million in public expenditure every year (about EUR 100,000 in Jyväskylä)

4 Service implementation Recipients 1 Weather forecasts Monitoring of street conditions Assistance from the PANU weather services centre (pilot) Recipients sign up for the service via SMS. They can choose when they want to be warned about slippery conditions: immediately, 6 a.m., 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. The recipients forward the message, so that the total number of recipients is double the number of the initial recipients. 2 Warnings are issued by winter maintenance employees on call SMS warnings when the conditions become clearly more slippery than before SMS/Internet data processing operator 3 Automatic group SMS warning The coordinator uses a web-based application Maintenance of recipient information Customer service and website maintenance Feedback, statistics Conclusions, development

5 Noteworthy It is important not to send too frequent warnings: most of the recipients should feel that every warning is relevant. Recipients must understand that the conditions may be slippery even if no warning has been issued. Slippery conditions may be local, but recipients may move in a large area. For example, they may live in a suburb, but work in the centre of the city. Recipients wishes vary in terms of warnings about slippery conditions detected during the night. The service has been developed to allow recipients to choose when they will be warned: immediately, 6 a.m., 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. Elderly recipients are not familiar with modern technology and require a relatively high level of individual service.

6 Employees experiences Issuing warnings via SMS has not caused significant extra work. It is easy to issue warnings alongside other work. It is not always easy to decide when to issue a warning about slippery conditions, but decisions on any necessary measures must be made in any case. Employees do not want more detailed criteria for issuing warnings. They want to be able to make the decision flexibly.

8 Do you want to continue to receive warnings?

9 Benefits and costs The goals of the service are relevant and meaningful, judging from feedback from employees issuing warnings and recipients of warnings. The service has received publicity, which has attracted attention to issues related to slippery conditions and has also had indirect positive effects. If the service helps prevent one in ten slipping accidents that require medical care, the City of Jyväskylä can save hundreds of thousands of euros every year. The cost of the service is smaller than the total cost of a single hip operation.

10 Thank you! More information:

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