The objective of Workpackage 12 is to investigate the usefulness and practicability of the GIS-based Decision Support Safety Tool and the Best Practice Safety Information Expert System which have been developed in Workpackages 9 and 11 in the RiPCORD-iSEREST Project. Best Practice Safety Information Expert System is based on an inventory of best practice information about road safety improvement gathered from all EU-member states and the world wide international background. It provides an estimate of the safety level of certain road infrastructure features or deficiencies. In the RiPCORD-iSEREST Project; while Workpackage 9 provides a free-accessible data-base for road authorities responsible for secondary roads, the system validity and dependability have been checked in Workpackage 12. For this purpose, the evaluation of the questionnaires has been made which were asked to the local experts in Poland and in Turkey. The Decision Support Safety Tool (DST) which has been modified and improved in Workpackage 11, helps road authorities to select appropriate safety intervention measures and develop different scenarios for road safety problems. The tool also helps to contemplate road safety level and cost effectiveness to alternate the scenarios to improve road safety according to the policies of road authorities. DST has been applied to the different problematic road sections with the local traffic and road data in Holland in Poland and in Turkey considering different regions in Europe. These demonstrations were implemented and evaluated in Workpackage 12. In these studies; cost and accident reduction estimates of different safety measures from SEROES have been taken from the DST data bank. Through these case study applications, the validity and efficiency of the tool in different regions have been questioned. The DST has been demonstrated in the Netherlands in the Province of Fryslân. Within this province there are different regional cooperation's between municipalities and other road managers in order to adjust their road policies to each other. The DST demonstration has referred to the region of North-east Fryslân. Several road sections have been selected from the different parts of Turkey for the demonstration. On the other hand, one long road section with different black spot concentrations was studied in the Poland Demonstration. Mobycon was the responsible organization for the Holland Demonstration. In Turkey, The Turkish General Road Directorate performed the demonstration study. In Poland, PIAP worked for the DST implementation on the selected road. The results of the demonstrated studies were displayed in the relevant tables and graphics in Chapter 4 of the WP12 Final Report. The lack of data for the cost of the measures and 'accident reduction effect' restricted the demonstration study. Poland and Turkey case studies were continued with the measures having Western Europe cost and reduction effect data. Although this data limitation affected the dependability of the demonstration study results, the overall effectiveness of the tool was still positively tested under different regions. The SEROES Expert System was used for finding suitable measures for the DST application. SEROES was presented by Mobycon (in Holland), TGDH (in Tur-key) and as well as by PIAP (in Poland) to various users and experts (i.e. managers from Local Road Authorities). After all these demonstrations and their evaluations, SEROES was improved regarding the comments and explanations given by the experts. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting