Review of stakeholder feedback from Midterm Workshop

Deliverable 2.5 of the H2020 project SafetyCube
Author(s)
Thomson, R.; Magrin, A.; Filtness, A.; Kaiser, S.; Aigner-Breuss, E.; Weijermars, W.; Martensen, H.; Elvik, R., Thomas, P.; Yannis, G.; Niewöhner, W.; Papadimitriou, E.
Year

Safety CaUsation, Benefits and Efficiency (SafetyCube) is a European Commission supported Horizon 2020 project with the objective of developing an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) that will enable policymakers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities.

This report describes the presentation of project outputs to stakeholders at the project midterm workshop. A one day workshop with 38 stakeholders was held on September 27, 2016 in Brussels. Feedback was given in the areas of data collection and coding methodologies, DSS structure and operation, and applications of the DSS. In all areas there were concrete suggestions from the stakeholders. Ensuring that the stakeholders shape the tool will ensure that it will be used.

The SafetyCube DSS allows the user to query a database of road safety information based on crash risk factors, safety measures, and crash scenarios. The tool was still at the prototype level and features for cost benefit analysis and information on serious injuries will be incorporated into the DSS in the second half of the. It is important to note that the DSS is not planned to be a hub for statistical database searches regarding crash statistics.

The users expressed positive expectations for the tool and identified enhancements and improvements to the system and underlying data. There were no comments that questioned the basic approach and no needs to radically shift the development activities were identified.

The audience suggested that the most critical audience for the DSS is the technical advisor or individuals undertaking technical analyses for decision makers. It is important to provide high level information to the user so even nontechnical stakeholders are able to gain from the tool. The use of synopses to provide summary information is a useful compromise but the strength of the SafetyCube Decision Support is in technical data collected in the coded studies. These coded studies allow for faster referencing of important data.

The level of details needed in a DSS that would satisfy all potential stakeholders is a challenge for the SafetyCube team but good progress is being made. The use of synopses – summary reports of general topics in the gathered data - was one approach developed by the group to facilitate the knowledge transfer without overloading the user with text heavy documents.

Pages
16 + 76
Publisher
European Commission, Brussels

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