Using GIS to explore the relationship between road grade and accidents

Abstract

This project aims to determine the relationship between road grades and road accident using GIS. Over the years, there had been numerous researches focus on improving the safety of road intersection, however there is a lack of research on the straight section of the road, especially on the grade of the road. Therefore this project will focus on the safeness of steep road grade on straight roads. The objective of this project was to determine if there is a relationship between road accidents and road grades using GIS. This project is conducted under a GIS environment where sources data are spatially referenced in the projection of GDA94. Data such as study area boundary, height of a location and the number of accidents are obtained in this GIS environment. These information are then used to perform correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between road grade and road accidents. The result from the correlation indicates that a relationship does exist between road grade and road accident. In conclusion this project showed that road with steeper grade do caused greater number of road crashes when compared to flat or levelled road.