An Integrated Computational System for Roadway Crash Management

It is a challenging task to track, analyze, understand, and prevent crash occurrence due to the complexity and uncertainty associated with and many immeasurable factors involved in crash occurrence. Crash management systems have been established in the past to systematically manage and analyze crash data to better understand the mechanism underlying crash occurrence. However, effective crash management could not be achieved without considering other existing systems relevant to crash management. This paper introduces an integrated computational system. The system is developed based on an object-oriented system design concept. The use of object concept in crash management not only provides a concise interpretation of data structure but also allows for easy system transferability among different agencies. Specifically, the system utilizes an existing popular transportation analysis system and/or software, Synchro, and combines crash data with those data relevant to crash occurrence, such as traffic characteristic data, traffic control data, and roadway geometric data. By establishing a concurrent link between the crash data and the relevant transportation data, the system is able to deliver timely monitoring and analysis of crashes and leads to more concise identification of safety issues and related countermeasures. Deployment of such a system is anticipated to have a significant impact on crash management due to improved efficiency,