GIS APPLICATION FOR IDENTIFICATION OF ACCIDENT BLACK SPOTS FOR TWO LANE HIGHWAYS

Abstract

Road safety in India is a matter of great concern. Over the last decade, there has been significant increase in the motor vehicle population and the consequent increase in the road accident fatalities and the injuries in India. In the past 15 years the number of persons getting killed annually has increased by about 20 times. Also, the statistic shows that India's motor vehicle population is hardly 1% of the world yet 10% of the total fatalities occur on Indian roads. Study has been carried out on sections of National Highways No. 58 (from Km 72 to Km 230). Accident data for the selected highway sections have been collected from police stations for the last 5 years (2000-2004). Locations that have an abnormally high number of crashes are described as crash concentrated, high hazard, hazardous, hot spot or Accident black spot sites. In this dissertation, a database for the crash data has been created according to year-wise in ARC-GIS 8.3, which gives all details related to crash data like total crashes per section, location, crash rate, critical crash rate , crash ratio etc. Analysis of crash data has been carried out in ARC-GIS 8.3 and the high crash locations have been identified by using the Critical Crash Rate Factor Method. All the above analysis is done in a GIS environment, which gives a good visual representation of accident data.