The City Council of Lisbon, Portugal, decided to build a pavement management system (PMS) for the vast road network under its administration at the beginning of 1999. This paper presents a geographical information system (GIS)-based PMS for Lisbon, developed by a team involving staff from the Lisbon City Council and the University of Coimbra. The system consists of three basic modules: a road network database, a quality evaluation tool and a decision-aid tool. The paper also describes the process leading to the creation of the PMS and the activities developed during the first and second years of its implementation. This period was mainly taken up with the preparation of a GIS for the road network, preparation of the quality evaluation tool and launching of the decision-aid tool. The final part of the paper discusses the main difficulties encountered so far and presents the developments planned for the near future.

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Of all the EU countries, Portugal has one of the highest rates of fatalities and injuries per 1000 inhabitants as a result of road accidents. Most (60%) of the accidents involving personal injury occur in urban areas. The main reason for this is the chaotic road environment, resulting in complete confusion for vulnerable road users and vehicles. All users need a road network that they can better understand. A road safety management system has been developed in Coimbra, which is a medium-sized Portuguese town of 200 000 inhabitants. The system is basically a road accidents database that is linked to the road network model, the main piece of the geographical information system used to track road accidents. After identification of accident accumulation spots, infrastructure treatment is prioritised by the use of a ‘risk index’ for each site. Each spot is audited, focusing mainly on road layout and signs. As a result, low-cost countermeasures can be proposed to city councils as a way of reducing road accidents. The paper describes the relevant features of all the procedures and presents results for two spots, with a before/after effectiveness analysis.

According to official statistics, an important percentage of accidents and injuries are reported in Portuguese urban areas: from 2004 to 2007, 70% of the injury accidents and 43% of the fatalities occurred inside urban areas. To develop an efficient and affective strategy towards road safety, it is necessary for road administrations to have the proper tools for the quantification of safety levels and the explicit consideration of safety issues in the road management process. The analysis of spatial accident distribution in road networks and the knowledge of the relations between accident frequencies and variables describing the urban road environment will allow a more efficient definition of priorities for intervention and safety funding. This can be achieved by means of accident prediction models adapted to the urban context where they are applied, and by the use of a Geographic Information System based methodology to analyse spatial patterns of road accidents. This paper summarizes the result of the bibliographic study on accident prediction models applied to urban areas and the data collection on road accidents, road infrastructure characteristics and traffic and land use information, integrated in a Geographic Information System, where it may be graphically visualized and analyzed.