A conceptual framework for a road safety monitor. Efficient and effective governance in many policy areas requires reliable knowledge about the main driving forces behind the current situation and about the consequences and effects of strategic policy plans. Today, more data are collected, analyzed and aggregated than ever before in all sectors of society. Due to i.e. the decentralized policy in Flanders and Belgium this huge amount of data is scattered across many government agencies managing their own isolated data sources and consequently impeding an integrated view on policy problems. The development of integrative monitoring systems is therefore vital to process, summarize and harmonize the multitude of information. Most policy domains apply their own conceptual framework to develop a set of indicators. The lack of a cross-policy approach and implementation of a common monitoring strategy discourages the exchange of indicators between policy domains and strengthens the information silos. A literature review was conducted to explore how a generic and theme-independent conceptual framework can be developed for the coherent and consistent monitoring of a policy domains state and dynamics. The conceptual framework aims at structuring and organizing indicators according to phenomena, issues and challenges they represent within a single harmonized set of indicators. In this study we rely on a general monitoring theory and propose a conceptual framework that primarily supports the preparation and monitoring of strategic and operational policy objectives. We then apply the conceptual framework to a specific policy domain i.e. road safety. Worldwide, road accidents are one of the leading causes of death and responsible for a multitude of non-fatal accidents. The most obvious measure of road safety within a given region is the number of (fatal) victims. The publication of accident data in Belgium faces a significant delay. Moreover, because of a decreasing number of accidents the data become statistically difficult to process. Although crash and casualty data remain relevant, the focus of traffic safety policy recently shifted to accident prevention and therefore other road safety parameters are needed to obtain a broader view on the road safety issue. In a study on the development of a Flemish Road Safety Indicator Set (Wilmots et al., 2011) road safety indicators were selected based on the theoretical framework of the road safety target hierarchy. By transposing the proposed indicators according to the principles of the general monitoring theory and with regard to the conceptual framework proposed in a policy-oriented context, we attempt to lay down a strong basis for a policy-oriented Road Safety Monitor. The transposition is done by structuring the ideal indicators of the Flemish Road Safety Indicator Set according to the policy objectives of the Flemish Traffic Safety Plan and the key risk areas as identified in the Human-Vehicle-Environment model. Indicators that meet the required criteria are considered as primary candidate indicators to be monitored in the road safety monitor. The analysis has shown that a number of policy objectives and/or risk areas of road safety are only partially monitored with indicators selected from the theoretical framework of the target hierarchy for road safety. The conclusions of this report contain five recommendations to complete and expand the indicators from the perspective of developing a integrative Road Safety Monitor. Finally, this report provides a first look at the development of a monitoring tool. An analysis of different systems shows that the choice of a geospatial content management system combines the best of two worlds: a robust content management system to manage information and present it on a website, enriched with software components that provide direct access to geographic databases and web services. A first version of a conceptual data model for indicators was developed and presented graphically using an entity-relationship diagram. Because indicator metadata are indispensable for the management and correct interpretation of data, they should be an important part of the data model itself. (Author/publisher)
Abstract