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Designing a Rapid Deployment Emergency Services (RapiDES) Vehicle for 2020: Addressing the problem of ever increasing traffic delaying the emergency services vehicles in big cities

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
  • This thesis/project is about the design process of designing a conceptual vehicle design that responds to a growing global phenomenon of ever increasing traffic congestion delaying emergency response times of various emergency services. This thesis aims at establishing the case for a smarter, smaller and more responsive emergency services vehicle design by first looking at the phenomenon of ever increasing traffic volume in big cities around the world particularly in North America, examining the causes and consequences of traffic congestion, and identifying the most critical impact it causes which is on the emergency response times of various emergency services which makes a difference between life and death with a minute’s delay to the scene. The thesis then attempts to offer a solution with the accompanying practical project focusing on designing a Rapid Deployment Emergency Services (RapiDES) vehicle for the near future (2020) to meet the challenges of saving lives and properties in a quick and responsive way. This design of RapiDES will serve as a baseline model for the North American context and can be modified to suit the needs and requirements for other markets. The design requirements and key features of RapiDES are generated and described in the Design Brief of RapiDES as a result of rigorous research mapping exercise and scenario studies of RapiDES in action for the three emergency services of EMS, fire rescue and law enforcement. The core essence of the thesis is the novel proposition that existing emergency services vehicles are too large and are themselves part of the problem of delay in response times. Thus it is imperative for a new vehicle design for the emergency services that is narrow and streamlined in order to weave through heavy traffic easily in order to reduce the response time and to reach the scene of emergency safe and dry with the required equipment. The outcome of the design is represented by a scaled model, full-sized side view rendering, and several renderings of RapiDES performing tasks in environments as described in scenario studies and design brief. These artefacts serve as a means of evaluating the design as is commonly practiced in automotive industry in the initial stage of a vehicle design project. The design fulfills the requirements entailed in the design brief and is deemed successful of passing the initial stage of a real vehicle design project.

  • Date created
    2015-09-29
  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Type of Item
    Research Material
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/R3TX3566D
  • License
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International