Abstract

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Traffic and Safety Division continues to advance the safety of roadway sections throughout the state. In an effort to aid UDOT in meeting their goal, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Brigham Young University (BYU) has worked with the Statistics Department in developing analysis tools for safety. The most recent of these tools has been the development of a hierarchical Bayesian Poisson Mixture Model (PMM) of traffic crashes known as the Utah Crash Prediction Model (UCPM), a hierarchical Bayesian Binomial statistical model known as the Utah Crash Severity Model (UCSM), and a Bayesian Horseshoe selection method. The UCPM and UCSM models helped with the analysis of safety on UDOT roadways statewide and the integration of the results of these models was applied to Geographic Information System (GIS) framework. This research focuses on the addition of roadway attributes in the selection and analysis of “hot spots.” This is in conjunction with the framework for highway safety mitigation migration in Utah with its six primary steps: network screening, diagnosis, countermeasure selection, economic appraisal, project prioritization, and effectiveness evaluation. The addition of roadway attributes was included as part of the network screening, diagnosis, and countermeasure selection, which are included in the methodology titled “Hot Spot Identification and Analysis.” Included in this research was the documentation of the steps and process for data preparation and model use for the step of network screening and the creation of one of the report forms for the steps of diagnosis and countermeasure selection. The addition of roadway attributes is required at numerous points in the process. Methods were developed to locate and evaluate the usefulness of available data. Procedures and systemization were created to convert raw data into new roadway attributes, such as grade and sag/crest curve location. For the roadway attributes to be useful in selection and analysis, methods were developed to combine and associate the attributes to crashes on problem segments and problem spots. The methodology for “Hot Spot Identification and Analysis” was enhanced to include steps for the inclusion and defining of the roadway attributes. These methods and procedures were used to help in the identification of safety hot spots so that they can be analyzed and countermeasures selected. Examples of how the methods are to function are given with sites from Utah’s state roadway network.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2015-07-01

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd7963

Keywords

Poisson Mixture Model, crash analysis, hot spots, safety, roadway attributes

Language

english

Share

COinS