An apparatus, method, program product, and system are disclosed for cognitive-based incident response. A sensor module captures baseline environment data related to a traffic incident using one or more sensors at a location of the traffic incident. A recommendation module generates and makes available, in real-time, one or more recommendations for responding to the traffic incident using cognitive computing processes based on the baseline environment data, the one or more recommendations comprising precautionary information for managing one or more emergency situations at the traffic incident. An update module continuously captures new environment data for the traffic incident using the one or more sensors, supplements the baseline environment data with the new environment data, and generates and makes available, in real-time, one or more updated recommendations based on the supplemented environment data using the supplemented environment data and the cognitive computing processes.