A Methodology for Ranking Road Safety Hazardous Locations Using Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

This study presents a methodology for ranking road safety hazardous locations using analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Road accident causes huge losses to the economy in terms of the cost incurred in hospitalization and treatment and damages to vehicles and property etc. There is an urgent need to reduce the number and severity of road accidents by implementing remedial measures at hazardous locations in the road network. Further, it is generally not possible to implement all remedial measures identified due to limited budget available for road safety improvement. Hence, it is needed to rank the hazardous locations so that depending on the available budget, the hazardous locations can be treated. However, literature review indicated that most of the methodologies require accident data for this purpose. Comprehensive road accident data is rarely available. Hence, this study presents a four stage methodology for ranking road safety hazardous locations which do not require accident data. The methodology presents a hierarchical structural for identification of safety factors. Road safety hazardous conditions are decomposed into safety hazardous condition at straight sections, safety hazardous condition at curve sections and safety hazardous condition at intersections. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to determine the weight of the different identified safety factors. The Safety Hazardous Index is developed using weight of safety factors and condition rating of safety factors. The Safety Hazardous Index is developed separately to evaluate safety at straight section, safety at curve section and safety at intersection. It is expected that this study will be useful in treating more hazardous locations depending on the available budget for road safety improvement.here and insert your abstract text.