Black Spot Area Research Articles

Applying GIS in Analysing Black Spot Areas in Penang, Malaysia

This study aims to analyze fatal accident rate involving all vehicle types in the North East District of Penang. It covers fatal accident data within the duration of three years from 2011 till 2013. The primary objective is to analyze the spatial pattern and fatal accident black spot areas using Geographic Information System (GIS) application. Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN) tool is used to analyze fatal accident spatial pattern, while Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) method is utilized for fatal accident analysis. The Fatal Accident rates in 2011, 2012 and 2013 were the highest with each accounted up to 90, 88 and 91 cases. The result of ANN shows that the fatal accident pattern for 2011, 2012 and 2013 is clustered with null hypothesis rejected. The KDE analysis result shows that most fatal accident black spot areas happened at main road areas or segments.

Road safety analysis on Srondol – Jatingaleh highway, using Crash Modification Factors (CMFs) Case study: Semarang City, Central Java, Indonesia

Problem : Toll Roads Section B (Srondol - Jatingaleh) Semarang have facilities and road traffic safety management has been installed, but the number of accidents in 2011 to 2015 still around 16% to 25%. The Road hazard caused by facilities and road safety management such as various issues can be the factors that cause accidents and become a black spot areas. Method : This reseach finds some factors that influence the safety function performance. Safety analysis with CMFs method which uses an analysis by HSM and give some solutions to improve the safety performance of highway. Data were collected by observation for primary data and literature studied for secondary data and It were analyzed with method using Crash Modification Factors (CMFs), Empirical Bayes (EB), and Negative Binomial Regression. The results of the analysis showed the factors that influence the amount of accident is happened and predictive modeling accident toll roads Srondol – Jatingaleh. Accident prediction modeling calibration with data on the number of accidents is 0.1, which means the method CMFs and EB can be used to analysis and predict the accidents on Srondol - Jatingaleh highway.

Green technology as a strategy in managing the black spots in Siak Highway, Indonesia

It was identified that the total traffic accidents in the highway section of Siak, Indonesia within the period of 2011 to 2015 were 1,208 events (2 accidents per 3 days). This accidents figure were considered relatively high and it need to mitigate. The aim of this research are to; (i) analyze the location of Black Spot in the Siak highway, and (ii) drawn a strategy reducing the traffic accidents based on green technology. This study identified that the black spot area was located in the STA 44 + 050 (with a value of the weighted index was 86 and an accident severity rate was 6.21), these values were relatively high. The road horizontal alignment condition at this location was highlighted as a sub-standard high way, consists of low visibility, numerous turning pads, minimum road signs, and minimum road shoulders width. The technical strategy was then drawn as follow; conducting regular road rehabilitation and maintenance, equipping road markings and the street lights as well as road safety facilities based on the green technology such as solar cell traffic lights, solar cell street lights and deploying police statues in reducing traffic accidents within the black spot areas.

Modelling Assessment on Causes of Road Accidents Along Kilimanjaro-Arusha Highway in Tanzania

This paper aims on assessing the risk factors which are associated to the cause of road accidents in Kilimanjaro-Arusha highway 78.46km. Road accidents have been one of the paramount road cases in Tanzania. However, when ensuring road safety rules in Tanzania, it is important to assess the nature and causes of road accidents in the country. It is also necessary to find out the factors which lead to an obstacle of achieving road safety and regulations. This paper focuses on the assessment of road accidents in Tanzania and the associated factors such as inadequate road signs, inadequate carriageway width, lack of pedestrian facilities and law enforcement are considered to be critical shortcomings. The findings have shown the considerable proportions of accident and its outcomes of death and injuries at various black spot such as Kikavu River 60%, Kikatiti 20%, Nduruma bridge 10%, Kilala slope 5%, and Sadec 5%. Also missing and poor road makings and road signs from CH: 0+200 -22+600 needs to be rectified. In order to reduce road accidents in Kilimanjaro-Arusha section, the Government should rectify black spot areas by considering geometric standard in highway, set aside fund for provision and maintenance of traffic control devices, train road users on traffic laws and regulations, set aside fund for increasing road width with consideration of dual carriage way and climbing lane along mountain Kikavu area to reduce the action of overtaking. This study has revealed the pattern and trends of road accidents in Kilimanjaro-Arusha from 2013 to 2016. It shows that the accident occurrence was showing sign of decreasing from 2015 up to 2016. Passengers and pedestrians are the groups which identified to be always at highest risk of being injured or highly prone to motor traffic accidents. Driving under alcoholic behaviour (drugs, alcohol), distraction, over speed driving, overtaking, poor vehicle parking management and pedestrian fault are among of road user behaviour identified to cause accidents within the stretch.

Road safety analysis on Achmad Yani frontage road Surabaya

This research discusses road safety analysis on the operation of frontage road on the west side of Achmad Yani Road Surabaya. This research began by conducting survey on secondary data of traffic accidents. In addition, primary data survey was conducted to obtain traffic data, geometric road data, and other supporting data at the study site along the west side frontage of Ahmad Yani Road Surabaya. Devices used in this research include camera, handy cam, speed gun, counters of vehicles, rolling meter, computer and others. In outline, the stages to conduct this research are divided into 4 stages, namely 1.the preparation stage, 2.data collection and processing, 3. analysis and discussion, and 4. conclusion. The results of this study showed that the accident characteristics of the frontage road are (i) 3 accidents occured per month, (ii) motorcycles was accounted for the largest proportion of accidents which amounted to 74.6 percent, (iii) there were 3 accident victims per month, and (iv) material losses per month worths 1.2 million. The accident rate in 2016 was 0.04 crashes per one million vehicle travels per kilometer, while during 2 months in 2017 it was 0.15 accidents per one million vehicle travels per kilometer. Black spot area of accident is located on Sta 2 + 800 to 2 + 900 which is in front of Graha Pena building and DBL Arena. The high rate of accidents is influenced by the speed of the vehicle which 85 percentile exceeds the speed limit of 40km per hour.

Three Strategies Reducing Accident Rates at Black Spots and Black Sites Road in Riau Province, Indonesia

Abstract This paper aimed to (i) identify black spots and black sites road within the east cross highway of Sumatra, Ujung Tanjung – Bagan Batu, Indonesia, (ii) analyze its traffic accidents anatomy, and (iii) recommend appropriate strategy for reducing the accident rates within this road section. In the period of 2009-2011, it was identified that, the black spot area (1 km of the road length) within this highway was located at KM 36-37 road section. The black sites area (6 kms) was located at Balam Jaya to Balai Jaya. The numbers of traffic accident occurrences at the black site area were 36 events for 3 years period. The traffic accidents were caused by; human errors (66.67%), vehicle failures (11.11%) and, poor of the existing road technical conditions (22.22%). After implementing 3 strategies encompassing: (i) educating road user, (ii) improving safer road strategy, and (iii) improving road safety and technical specifications, the number of accident rates decreased by 50% in 2014.

Non-destructive detection of blackspot in potatoes by Vis-NIR and SWIR hyperspectral imaging

Blackspot is a subsurface potato damage resulting from impacts during harvesting. This type of bruising represents substantial economic losses every year. As the tubers do not show external symptoms, bruise detection in potatoes is not straightforward. Therefore, a nondestructive and accurate method capable of identifying bruised tubers is needed. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has been shown to be able to detect other subsurface defects such as bruises in apples. This method is nondestructive, fast and can be fully automated. Therefore, its potential for non-destructive detection of blackspot in potatoes has been investigated in this study. Two HSI setups were used, one ranging from 400 to 1000 nm, named Visible-Near Infrared (Vis-NIR) and another covering the 1000–2500 nm range, called Short Wave Infrared (SWIR). 188 samples belonging to 3 different varieties were divided in two groups. Bruises were manually induced and samples were analyzed 1, 5, 9 and 24 h after bruising. PCA, SIMCA and PLS-DA were used to build classifiers. The PLS-DA model performed better than SIMCA, achieving an overall correct classification rate above 94% for both hyperspectral setups. Furthermore, more accurate results were obtained with the SWIR setup at the tuber level (98.56 vs. 95.46% CC), allowing the identification of early bruises within 5 h after bruising. Moreover, the pixel based PLS- DA model achieved better results in the SWIR setup in terms of correctly classified samples (93.71 vs. 90.82% CC) suggesting that it is possible to detect blackspot areas in each potato tuber with high accuracy.

Multi-breakdown model for explaining the formation and growth of black spots in PZT capacitor under DC bias

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is widely used in various electro-mechanical devices because of its piezoelectric function. In some of its applications, the piezo ceramic will be subjected to a DC bias. The applied DC bias will stress the PZT ceramic and can undergo an electrical degradation process. This electrical degradation process demonstrates itself as resistance decreases and leakage current increases. Therefore, the electrical degradation phenomenon can severely impact on device performance and reliability. It has been found that, accompany this electrical breakdown process, black spots will appear in the ceramic body. In this paper, the formation and growth of the black spots in a PZT capacitor under DC bias is investigated. The black spot area is further characterized with various analytical methods. Based on previous research, a multi-breakdown model is proposed for explaining the mechanism of black spot growth.

PEMANFAATAN ALGORITMA K-MEANS UNTUK PEMETAAN HASIL KLASTERISASI DATA KECELAKAAN LALU LINTAS

It is a vital importance to analyze road traffic accidents in order to improve traffic security management. Currently, most of the traffic information analysis is limited to general statistical analysis, which is hard to explore the rules hiding in its dataset and also difficult to find the spatial distribution characteristics. This paper aims to analyze the road traffic accidents dataset based on data mining method of K-Means clustering and visualize the result as a map. Firstly, data are extracted for clustering road segments based on similar characteristics that lies on the dataset, i.e. the number of accidents, the number vehicles involved, and the number accidents’ victims. Secondly, the result of clustering are presented as a map that aims to assist the police officer in identifying and evaluating some black spot areas (accident prone areas) in a monthly period, hence monitoring the safety of highways users can be anticipated earlier.

A new sexual signal in rutting male red deer: Age related chemical scent constituents in the belly black spot

Rutting behaviour of red deer stags (Cervus elaphus) includes an extensive repertoire of visual and acoustic signals directed either to rival males or to females. As in other mammals, olfactory communication is expected to play a central role in these rutting interactions too, but this has rarely been investigated. Only during the rutting season, red deer males show a conspicuous black spot area throughout most of their underbelly produced by the impregnation of substances with a strong scent. Here, we examined the origin of these compounds and their potential role as chemical signals. By using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), we identified 67 compounds in the hair from the belly black spot of red deer stags, mainly heterocyclic aromatic organic compounds, such as m-cresol, benzoic acid, cyclohexanecarboxylic acid and ethylphenol, but we also found steroids, such as cholesterol and androstane-3,17-dione, carboxylic acids and their esters between n-C6 and n-C22, alcohols, squalene and other minor compounds. Many of these compounds are found in the belly black spot but not in other hair areas, and may have originated from several sources, such as the urine or the sebaceous glands of the skin, which impregnated the belly. Moreover, we found differences in chemical profiles depending on age, with older males having higher proportions of benzoic acid and androstane-3,17-dione, but lower proportions of m-cresol. Because most of these compounds are strongly odoriferous, and appear related to male characteristics, our data indicate that scent from the hairs forming the black spot of the belly may be regarded as an overlooked new sexual chemical signal in red deer in the context of competition for mates during the rutting season.

The effects of sexual selection on life‐history traits: an experimental study on guppies

Sexual selection is often prevented during captive breeding in order to maximize effective population size and retain genetic diversity. However, enforcing monogamy and thereby preventing sexual selection may affect population fitness either negatively by preventing the purging of deleterious mutations or positively by reducing sexual conflicts. To better understand the effect of sexual selection on the fitness of small populations, we compared components of female fitness and the expression of male secondary sexual characters in 19 experimental populations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) maintained under polygamous or monogamous mating regimes over nine generations. In order to generate treatments that solely differed by their level of sexual selection, the middle-class neighbourhood breeding design was enforced in the monogamous populations, while in the polygamous populations, all females contributed similarly to the next generation with one male and one female offspring. This experimental design allowed potential sexual conflicts to increase in the polygamous populations because selection could not operate on adult-female traits. Clutch size and offspring survival showed a weak decline from generation to generation but did not differ among treatments. Offspring size, however, declined across generations, but more in monogamous than polygamous populations. By generation eight, orange- and black-spot areas were larger in males from the polygamous treatment, but these differences were not statistically significant. Overall, these results suggest that neither sexual conflict nor the purging of deleterious mutation had important effects on the fitness of our experimental populations. However, only few generations of enforced monogamy in a benign environment were sufficient to negatively affect offspring size, a trait potentially crucial for survival in the wild. Sexual selection may therefore, under certain circumstances, be beneficial over enforced monogamy during captive breeding.

The Automated Speed Enforcement System — A Case Study in Putrajaya

Speeding contributed 60% of road crashes in Malaysia every year. The automated speed enforcement (ASE) system was piloted in 10 black spots areas across the states of Selangor, Perak, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya on 22 September 2012. This study was aimed to measure the drivers’ speed compliance at Lebuh Sentosa, Putrajaya where ASE camera was installed. Spot-speed studies conducted in October, November 2012 and February 2013, respectively revealed more than 70-90% compliance at the treatment site (ASE camera installed). However, less than 50% of drivers comply with the speed limit at the control site (ASE camera not installed). At treatment site, the 85th percentile speed was less than 70 km/h but it was above 70 km/h at the control site. Moreover, the authors found that the effect of the ASE camera increases over the time. This implies that the ASE system has successfully reduced the speeding incidents at the black spot area.

Environmental Health Impact Assessment Of A “Black Spot Area” In Mauritius

Environmental Health Impact Assessment Of A “Black Spot Area” In Mauritius

Black spots produced by buried macroalgae in intertidal sandy sediments of the Wadden Sea: Effects on the meiobenthos

The effects of buried decaying macroalgae on meiobenthos were examined in intertidal sandy sediments of the Wadden Sea of Lower Saxony. In situ experiments confirmed that one of the principal causes of the formation of reduced surface sediments or ‘black spots’ on the tidal flats is the increasing occurrence and subsequent decomposition of filamentous green algae ( Enteromorpha spp.) buried in the sediment. Five to fifteen days after algal material had been buried, the sediment surface turned black. The impact of these black spots on meiobenthos was dramatic: the changed chemical conditions in the sediment resulted in long and drastic reductions in meiofaunal abundance and number of taxa. A multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis of data on meiobenthic abundances revealed that samples from black-spot areas were clearly separated from those of control and reference areas. Re-oxidized black spots showed recolonization by meiofaunal animals, with numbers of individuals and taxa similar to those of oxidized surface sediments. The use of abundances of members of higher meiobenthic taxa to monitor changes in the sediment's chemistry, especially those caused by biomass overload, is discussed.

Small-scale spatial distribution of marine meiobenthos: the effects of decaying macrofauna

To evaluate the effects of decaying animals on small-scale horizontal distribution of meiobenthos in muddy habitats, a laboratory experiment was performed at the Askö Laboratory in the northwestern Baltic Sea. A microcosm (35×55×28 cm) containing a ca. 7-cm thick layer of sieved (0.5 mm) sublittoral mud was established in June 1990. Three months later specimens of the bivalve Macoma balthica were collected and killed in boiling water. The sediment inside the microcosm was implanted with empty shell, empty shell and dead animal or left alone. At the end of the experiment (17 days) visual examination of the microcosm revealed black spots at the sediment surface where dead animals had been implanted. The densities of nematodes, the most abundant group (98%), were not significantly different between areas. However total non-nematode fauna was found in much lower numbers (P<0.01) in the black spot areas. A multivariate analysis (detrended correspondence ordination) of nematode species abundance data separated samples from the black spot areas from the others. Of the 25 nematode species recorded in the microcosm, there was a significant difference between areas for four species. The decaying animals clearly attracted Monhystera disjuncta which was almost 6 times as abundant in the black spot areas compared to control and shell areas. Both the overall dominant species, Leptolaimus elegans and Calomicrolaimus honestus were found in lower numbers in the areas of dead Macoma than in control and shell areas. Sabatieria pulchra was found in lower numbers in the control areas compared to shell and dead animal areas. The overall structure of the nematode assemblage indicated a shift to lower dominance in the dead animal areas and it is speculated that decomposing animal tissue may be of primary importance regarding spatial distribution of meiobenthos.

Behavioural Risk Factors among Young Adults in Small Areas with High Mortality versus those in Low-Mortality Areas

A community-based cross-sectional survey of behavioural risk factors for premature mortality was carried out on a group of 354 adults aged 25-44 from previously identified high-mortality 'black-spots' in Dublin who were compared with 333 others from low-mortality areas. In the black-spot areas, 50.9% of respondents were current smokers versus 28.5% in low-mortality areas and 14.6% took 'sufficient' exercise versus 31.4% in low-mortality areas. People living in black spots were also less likely to make 'healthy' dietary choices than those in low-mortality areas. There is a higher prevalence of behavioural risk factors for premature mortality among young adults living in electoral wards/district electoral divisions (DEDs) with high standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) from all causes than among those in areas with low SMRs. A health promotion programme aimed at increasing exercise levels, reducing smoking and encouraging healthy eating should be aimed at young adults in DEDs with high SMRs.

Pigment cell differentiation in the fire-bellied toad, Bombina orientalis. I. Structural, chemical, and physical aspects of the adult pigment pattern.

Wild-collected adults of Bombina orientalis are bright green dorsally and red to red-orange ventrally. As a prelude to an analysis of the differentiation of pigment cells in developing B. orientalis, we describe structural and chemical aspects of the fully differentiated pigment pattern of the "normal" adult. Structurally, differences between dorsal green and ventral red skin are summarized as follows: (1) Dorsal green skin contains a "typical" dermal chromatophore unit comprised of melanophores, iridophores, and xanthophores. Red skin contains predominantly carotenoid-containing xanthophores (erythrophores), and skin from black spot areas contains only melanophores. (2) In ventral red skin, there is also a thin layer of deep-lying iridophores that presumably are not involved in the observed color pattern. (3) Xanthophores of red and green skin are morphologically distinguishable from each other. Dorsal skin xanthophores contain both pterinosomes and carotenoid vesicles; ventral skin xanthophores contain only carotenoid vesicles. Carotenoid vesicles in dorsal xanthophores are much larger but less electron dense than comparable structures in ventral xanthophores. The presence of carotenes in ventral skin accounts for the bright red-orange color of the belly of this frog. Similar pigments are also present in green skin, but in smaller quantities and in conjunction with both colored (yellow) and colorless pteridines. From spectral data obtained for xanthophore pigments and structural data obtained from the size and arrangement of reflecting platelets in the iridophore layer, we attempt to explain the phenomenon of observed green color in B. orientalis.