A multicriteria decision making–based methodology to identify accident-prone road sections

Abstract

Accident-prone road section (APRS) treatment is the most effective strategy for accident reduction. Because use of multicriteria decision making (MCDM) in the decision process improves the quality of the decision, especially in problems involving multiple criteria, MCDM approach may be the appropriate approach for APRS determination. In this study, an MCDM-based methodology was developed for the determination of APRSs. Weighted linear combination method was used to combine criteria. Because use of experts' opinion for criteria weight determination in MCDM studies may bring subjective results, all possible criteria weight combinations (with some simplifications) were tried to determine the best weight combination. “Relative risk” was used as common unit for criteria standardization and past accident data is utilized to express the “relative risk”. The methodology was tested on D850 State Highway, Tokat, Turkey. Five criteria (horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, intersections, significant places, shoulder width) were used in the process. At the end, although 63 out of 94 sections (67.02%) were labeled as “accident prone”, 173 out of 206 accidents (83.98%) take place in these sections. Therefore, the methodology can be used for APRS determination. Also, the effect of any change in the road properties on the accident-proneness can be simulated by simply changing the criterion values.