Geographical information systems aided traffic accident analysis system case study: city of Afyonkarahisar

Geographical Information System (GIS) technology has been a popular tool for visualization of accident data and analysis of hot spots in highways. Many traffic agencies have been using GIS for accident analysis. Accident analysis studies aim at the identification of high rate accident locations and safety deficient areas on the highways. So, traffic officials can implement precautionary measures and provisions for traffic safety. Since accident reports are prepared in textual format in Turkey, this situation makes it difficult to analyze accident results. In our study, we developed a system transforming these textual data to tabular form and then this tabular data were georeferenced onto the highways. Then, the hot spots in the highways in Afyonkarahisar administrative border were explored and determined with two different methods of Kernel Density analysis and repeatability analysis. Subsequently, accident conditions at these hot spots were examined. We realized that the hot spots determined with two methods reflect really problematic places such as cross roads, junction points etc. Many of previous studies introduced GIS only as a visualization tool for accident locations. The importance of this study was to use GIS as a management system for accident analysis and determination of hot spots in Turkey with statistical analysis methods. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.