Geospatial Factors Applied to Road Accidents: A Review

Abstract

Road accidents are a major source of trauma worldwide due to increasing numbers of vehicles and drivers. Considerable data has been collected on road accidents and this is frequently published as open data on the internet. These datasets include parameters such as accident type and number of fatalities as well as environmental variables such as road type, demographics, and area infrastructure. Geospatial analysis provides a means of understanding spatial factors that influence road accidents such as the built infrastructure, natural environment features such as hills and vegetation, traffic volume, and road design and construction. Geospatial visualization techniques can also help identify hotspots and blackspots. The Moran I, Getis-Ord, and Kernel Density Estimation techniques are the most commonly-used geospatial tests and their application is reported in many papers. This paper provides a review of geospatial factors that are relevant to road accidents.