Prioritizing Highway Safety Improvement Projects: A Multi-Criteria Model and Case Study with SafetyAnalyst

This paper presents a multi-criteria model for prioritizing highway safety improvement projects, in which a set of criteria related to the project’s technical, economic, and social impacts are properly weighted in consideration. The proposed model features an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework to tackle the multi-criteria decision making problem. Different from the conventional AHP, this paper adds a fuzzy scale level between the criteria level and the alternative level, which offers the advantage of preventing the vagueness and uncertainty on judgments of the decision-maker(s). Such a unique modeling feature is further embedded with a non-linear optimization formulation to maximize the consistency in pair-wise comparison and weight estimation for each criterion. Case study results reveal that the proposed model is efficient not only for selecting the most suitable project for a specific site, but also for determining the priorities for implementing those suitable projects among multiple sites given the budget constraint. Comparative study between the proposed model and the existing ranking methods has also indicated its capability to capture the comprehensive impacts of all contributory factors which have been neglected by most existing single multi-criteria approaches during the safety project selection process. The clarity of model inputs, ease of synthesizing the final score of each candidate project, and the interpretation of results with respect to different selection criteria offer its best potential to be used as an effective tool for highway safety managers to assess and refine the safety improvement investments.

• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753511003080
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09257535
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier. From a special issue: First International Symposium on Mine Safety Science and Engineering 2011
• Authors:
  • Yu, Jie
  • Liu, Yue
• Publication Date: 2012-4

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 1085-1092
• Serial:
  • Safety Science
  • Volume: 50
  • Issue Number: 4
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0925-7535
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09257535

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Analytic hierarchy process; Case studies; Computer models; Costs; Fuzzy logic; Highway planning; Highway safety; Multiple criteria decision making; Project management; Social factors
• Uncontrolled Terms: Highway improvement projects
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01365512
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 20 2012 12:18PM