Analysis of Traffic Accident Occurrence in Niigata Prefecture of Japan using Open Data

Abstract

In recent years, although the number of fatal traffic accidents tends to be decreasing, over 10 accidents per day still occur domestically on average. Primarily, physical improvement for automobiles, roads, and so on is important to eliminate traffic accidents. Also, we in parallel need radical traffic safety measures by analyzing traffic accident data and clarifying the traffic accident causes. On the other hand, utilization of public data owned by the government and municipalities, called Open Data, is positively promoted to solve various social issues. Therefore, we propose to find out novel features on the traffic accidents by analyzing both fundamental traffic accident data owned by each prefectural police department and Open Data in a multi-dimensional way, where Open Data include the data used for Geographic Information System. Additional findings regarding traffic accidents are unearthed by analyzing other Open Data such as municipal population data and meteorological data together. Examples using 45 months data of fatal traffic accidents in Niigata prefecture are presented.