An Expert System to Analyze Hazardous Intersections

Abstract

The detailed analysis of highway locations that have been identified as hazardous within the framework of a state Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) requires a great deal of time and money to perform. Given the limited resources available to state highway agencies, whose task it is to perform such analyses, it seems a worthwhile effort to automate this “location analysis.” And, given the nature of location analysis problems, which are based on judgement rather than mathematical models, it was known a prior; that conventional automation techniques were not appropriate for this application. A prototype microcomputer‐based expert system, which performs location analysis, was developed to assess the feasibility of applying this new technology to location analysis problems. This paper describes the prototype system, and presents a brief discussion of some of the issues that were addressed when building the system.