(A16) Using Geographical Information Systems in Road Traffic Injury Research: A Case Study of New Mumbai, India

Abstract

IntroductionA multidisciplinary approach with Geographical information systems, Public health and Social science inputs was adopted to survey the fatal and non-fatal traffic crash events in the New Mumbai municipality region in Western India to identify the risky zones on the arterial highways.MethodsA Standardized questionnaire was used to collect event data about the time, date, day of the week, location, type of injury, and vehicle type involved in the accidents, from the police station records. The data for the time period of January 2009 to July 2010 was merged into ESRI's ArcGIS software as attribute data. All the crash sites were georeferenced into the base map (with the major road networks of the region) by using a GPS receiver.ResultsAnalysis was done for Hot spot identification along the major highways, number of accidents, number of fatalities and injured, case-fatality ratio and number of accidents with only financial loss. Further, the role of environmental, geographical, sociological and constructional factors was highlighted on the locations of the RTC. These roadway factors, weather, population density, road conditions, profile of the injured and healthcare access was studied. Majority of RTCs occurred during normal weather and road conditions, during daylight and on dry roads. All the analyses and interpretations were done within the ArcGIS software environment and classifying RTCs according to the attributes on the Geodatabase gave significant results.ConclusionSpatial analysis using GIS for Road Traffic Accidents to identify hot spots to identify high risk zones in the region enables policy makers to design injury prevention strategies for RTCs. In India, further GIS-based research is needed for planning access to emergency health care, to determine environmental-related causes, developing Injury registries and design population-based educational interventions in a developing country setting.