One of the most important problems of road transportation is road safety. The present computation technology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Expert Systems (ES) have become suitable to handle large-scale transportation problems. For traffic safety ESs more accident data are necessary, requires international cooperation. The standards for the treatment have also to be internationally similar, because the traffic itself is also becoming more international. In this paper, a Road Safety Management System (RSMS) is drafted on the basis of an ES and a high-performance GIS as an integrator. It could also integrate other ESs in the transportation domain, becoming in its extended form a 'total' Transport Management System. Due to the GIS, the system could integrate or communicate with the data of other domains which have influence on the traffic itself, or on the evaluation of traffic circumstances. The user interface will be created according to the general professional skills, providing the wide-range suitability of the system. To create the RSMS, international collaboration is proposed to accumulate data and knowledge and to use the most advanced technologies for data exchange and processing. The system, due to the knowledge acquisition subsystem, updates itself according to new data and experiences. On the other hand, regular further development is necessary, following the evolution of database technologies. The system provides the 'real-time' exploitation of knowledge, and the efficient and internationally similar improvement of traffic safety. (Author/publisher)
Abstract