Statewide implementation of Safety Analyst: The Florida experience

Abstract

ABSTRACTSafety Analyst (SA) is a state-of-the-art software system designed to perform all the steps in the roadway safety management process. To implement the system, agencies must first prepare all the required input data and convert them into a standard format required by the system. However, this data preparation effort is extensive and has become a major obstacle to agency adoption of the system. This article describes Florida's efforts in preparing the input data needed to implement SA. It describes the SA data requirements and discusses several data preparation issues that agencies planning to implement SA are likely to encounter. Specifically, the article describes the methods employed to map Florida's variable codes and site subtypes to the required SA counterparts. The article also describes the approaches taken to collect missing data and to manipulate network data including network segmentation to achieve better results and inclusion of segment direction and geographic coordinates to enable data visualization in SA. The article further describes the development of a data converter tool to automatically convert the input data to standard import files used by SA, and the development of local safety performance functions to achieve better results. These experiences could provide useful lessons learned for agencies that have just started with SA or are contemplating its implementation.