Accident analysis plays an important part in the strategy to reduce road accidents. In the past, the main analysis tools available to the road safety engineer were paper maps allied to databases like Excel spreadsheets. Accidents were identified on the map using road segments or an area-based location. This was a very time consuming process and lacked accuracy. However, nowadays Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have revolutionised the whole framework of accident processing and analysis. A GIS Accident Processing and Analysis system was developed using MapInfo GIS software. This paper aims to describe how GIS can assist in the processing and analysis of accidents. The use of analysis tools such as cluster, density, sliding scale or blacksite analyses are described in detail. Finally, the paper gives an insight into the current development of an internet based GIS accident system. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract