Research Papers (2009 – 2013)

Filename cmrsc19_60.pdf
Filesize 471.29 KB
Version 1
Date added May 12, 2014
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Category 2009–CMRSC-XIX–Saskatoon
Tags Session 5B
Author/Auteur Kari Gunson, Giorgos Mountrakis

Abstract

Over the past few decades collisions with wildlife has become an important safety issue for transportation planners, especially with the increase of ungulate populations in some regions in North America. For example, by March 2009 a stretch of Highway 1 in Nova Scotia had already had over 200 deer-vehicle collisions. In Ontario, collisions with moose and deer resulted in 7 fatalities, and 542 injuries for motorists in 2004. Highway maintenance contractors and transportation planners have been collecting wildlife-vehicle collision (WVC) data (the location, and date) along roads. From this data, geospatial analyses have determined that there are hotspots or clustering patterns with WVCs due to specific road and environmental factors, e.g. traffic volumes and forest cover. This paper reviews a series of exploratory and statistical tools that can determine the 1-dimensional space, and time, and 2-dimensional spatiotemporal characteristics of collision patterns on roads using the kernel density estimator and Ripley’s K statistic. These tools can be applied to assess the spatiotemporal dynamics for any type of vehicle- collision dataset along roads that contains space and time information, to assist transportation planners with mitigation planning.

Kari Gunson, Giorgos Mountrakis